SYNOPSIS
       git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
       git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]


DESCRIPTION
       The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit.
       If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is shown. Otherwise,
       it suffixes the tag name with the number of additional commits on top
       of the tagged object and the abbreviated object name of the most recent
       commit.

       By default (without --all or --tags) git describe only shows annotated
       tags. For more information about creating annotated tags see the -a and
       -s options to git-tag(1).

OPTIONS
       <committish>...
           Committish object names to describe.

       --dirty[=<mark>]
           Describe the working tree. It means describe HEAD and appends
           <mark> (-dirty by default) if the working tree is dirty.

       --all
           Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref found in
           .git/refs/. This option enables matching any known branch, remote
           branch, or lightweight tag.

       --tags
           Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag found in
           .git/refs/tags. This option enables matching a lightweight
           (non-annotated) tag.

       --contains
           Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find the tag
           that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. Automatically
           implies --tags.

       --abbrev=<n>
           Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
           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 candidates
           to describe the input committish consider up to <n> candidates.
           Increasing <n> above 10 will take slightly longer but may produce a
           more accurate result. An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to
           be output.

       --exact-match
           "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-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
           leaking private tags made from the repository).

       --always
           Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.

EXAMPLES
       With something like git.git current tree, I get:

           [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
           v1.0.4-14-g2414721

       i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, but
       since it has a few commits on top of that, describe has added the
       number of additional commits ("14") and an abbreviated object name for
       the commit itself ("2414721") at the end.

       The number of additional commits is the number of commits which would
       be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". The hash suffix is "-g" +
       7-char abbreviation for the tip commit of parent (which was
       2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6). The "g" prefix stands for
       "git" and is used to allow describing the version of a software
       depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful in an
       environment where people may use different SCMs.

       Doing a git describe on a tag-name will just show the tag name:

           [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
           v1.0.4

       With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 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 --abbrev=4 HEAD^
           heads/lt/describe-7-g975b

       With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 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 these commands, as your
       git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with 975b
       The ancestor's tag will be output along with an abbreviation of the
       input committish's SHA1.

       If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which has the
       fewest commits different from the input committish will be selected and
       output. Here fewest commits different is defined as the number of
       commits which would be shown by git log tag..input will be the smallest
       number of commits possible.

AUTHOR
       Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org[1]>, but somewhat
       butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com[2]>. Later significantly
       updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org[3]>.

DOCUMENTATION
       Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list
       <git@vger.kernel.org[4]>.

GIT
       part of the git(1) suite

NOTES
        1. torvalds@osdl.org
           mailto:torvalds@osdl.org

        2. gitster@pobox.com
           mailto:gitster@pobox.com

        3. spearce@spearce.org
           mailto:spearce@spearce.org

        4. git@vger.kernel.org
           mailto:git@vger.kernel.org