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Re: [PATCH] doc: enhance git describe --tags help

From
Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date
Sep 30, 2008, 10:09 UTC
Message-ID
<48E1FACC.2010204@op5.se>
In-Reply-To
<20080930095641.GA9001@strlen.de>
Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
Show 16 quoted lines
> Hello,
> 
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 08:01:27AM -0700, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
>> --tags::
>> 	If a lightweight tag exactly matches, output it.  If no
>> 	annotated tag is found in the ancestry but a lightweight
>> 	tag is found, output the lightweight tag.
> IMHO --tags should behave as Erez expected (because it's what I
> expected, too).  As --tags currently behaves it's only usable in very
> rare cases (most of the time it only makes a difference on repos without
> any annotated tag).
> 
> When do you pass --tags?  Only if a lightweight tag is OK for an answer.
> And then I would prefer a "near" lightweight tag to a "farer" annotated
> one.
> 

The reason lightweight tags aren't considered is that they're often put somewhere to just mark some refs one wants to keep around, or as a sort of movable snapshot marker (we have "latest/build", "latest/tested" etc as lightweight tags). It's nifty to use lw tags for that since they can't be committed to by accident. That doesn't mean we want 'git describe' to start outputting "latest-build" whenever we want to pull a version number from it though.

This was especially true before the creation of "git stash" and the reflog, but quite a lot of people still use them for similar purposes.

In short; "git describe" output stays the way it is, or things will start unexpectedly breaking for quite a lot of people.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231
Previous: Uwe Kleine-KönigNext: Shawn O. Pearce
Message 20 of 26 in “git-describe doesn't show the most recent tag”
  1. Erez ZilberSep 28, 2008
  2. Pierre HabouzitSep 28, 2008
  3. Erez ZilberSep 28, 2008
  4. Pierre HabouzitSep 28, 2008
  5. Pierre HabouzitSep 28, 2008
  6. doc: enhance git describe --tags helpPierre Habouzit, Sep 28, 2008
  7. Shawn O. PearceSep 29, 2008
  8. Pierre HabouzitSep 30, 2008
  9. describe: Make --tags and --all match lightweight tags more oftenShawn O. Pearce, Oct 10, 2008
  10. Pierre HabouzitOct 10, 2008
  11. Junio C HamanoOct 10, 2008
  12. Shawn O. PearceOct 13, 2008
  13. describe: Make --tags and --all match lightweight tags more oftenShawn O. Pearce, Oct 13, 2008
  14. Santi BéjarOct 15, 2008
  15. Andreas EricssonOct 11, 2008
  16. Shawn O. PearceOct 12, 2008
  17. Andreas EricssonOct 12, 2008
  18. Uwe Kleine-KönigOct 12, 2008
  19. Uwe Kleine-KönigSep 30, 2008
  20. Andreas EricssonSep 30, 2008
  21. Shawn O. PearceSep 30, 2008
  22. Uwe Kleine-KönigSep 30, 2008
  23. Shawn O. PearceSep 30, 2008
  24. Uwe Kleine-KönigOct 15, 2008
  25. Erez ZilberSep 28, 2008
  26. Andreas EricssonSep 28, 2008

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