X-Git-Url: https://git.tokkee.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=Documentation%2Fgit-describe.txt;h=78b9808aa3a2f5fe2435ea188ac4e73508c2720a;hb=905bf7742cf5f4a6dea2e75ba2dbd89d5dfaa793;hp=a30c5ac96618f5010388edd66815ec97971a92e0;hpb=0d5055665ca1e76659ffa96bf972b4b0125ea069;p=git.git

diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
index a30c5ac96..78b9808aa 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
@@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit
 
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
+[verse]
 'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
+'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
@@ -27,6 +29,11 @@ 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
@@ -44,7 +51,9 @@ 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 +77,8 @@ 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
@@ -87,7 +96,7 @@ With something like git.git current tree, I get:
 	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 handful commits on top of that,
+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.
@@ -108,7 +117,7 @@ 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 +126,13 @@ 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 these commands, 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
 ---------------