More precise description of 'git describe --abbrev'

Also adds a note about why the output in the examples might give
different output today.

Signed-off-by: Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Gisle Aas 2009-10-29 22:29:35 +01:00 committed by Junio C Hamano
parent 7c3baa9abf
commit 492cf3f72f

View File

@ -44,7 +44,9 @@ OPTIONS
--abbrev=<n>::
Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
abbreviated object name, use <n> digits, or as many digits
as needed to form a unique object name. An <n> of 0
will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag.
--candidates=<n>::
Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
@ -68,8 +70,8 @@ OPTIONS
This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name
in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be
a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will
describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2
that points at object deadbeef....).
describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2
that points at object deadbee....).
--match <pattern>::
Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid
@ -108,7 +110,7 @@ the output shows the reference path as well:
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
@ -117,6 +119,13 @@ closest tagname without any suffix:
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
tags/v1.0.0
Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be
longer than what Linus saw above when he ran this command, as your
git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with
975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not
be sufficient to disambiguate these commits.
SEARCH STRATEGY
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