From: Roland Hieber Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2020 14:13:32 GMT Subject: git-describe --tags warning: 'X' is really 'Y' here Message-ID: <20200205141332.lov2f2fvinehcd3a@pengutronix.de> Hi, I'm working with the GCC Git repo [0] (which was apparently recently converted from SVN [1]), and I'm trying to find out the most recent tag. So on the master branch I do: gcc (master) $ git describe --tags --abbrev=0 warning: tag 'gcc_9_2_0_release' is really 'releases/gcc-9.2.0' here gcc_9_2_0_release It took me a while to find out what the warning means, because 'gcc_9_2_0_release' is not in $(git tag -l), and it cannot be used as a ref either: gcc (master) $ git show gcc_9_2_0_release fatal: ambiguous argument 'gcc_9_2_0_release': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this: 'git [...] -- [...]' That name is in the tag itself: gcc (master) $ git show releases/gcc-9.2.0 | head -n3 tag gcc_9_2_0_release Tagger: Jakub Jelinek Date: 2019-08-12 09:38:59 So my question is: is it the intended behaviour of 'git-describe --tags' that it outputs tag names that cannot be used as a ref? If so, what is a good other way to find out the most recent tag? [0]: git://gcc.gnu.org/git/gcc.git, https://gcc.gnu.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=gcc.git [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=gcc.git;a=tag;h=f5b196de86fde51578354ff5f98be6d9c397c8fe Thanks, -- Roland Hieber, Pengutronix e.K. | r.hieber@pengutronix.de | Steuerwalder Str. 21 | https://www.pengutronix.de/ | 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0 | Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686 | Fax: +49-5121-206917-5555 |