From: Junio C Hamano Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:13:09 GMT Subject: Re: git-describe only works on full tags Message-ID: <7vhcf6cd3e.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Jan Engelhardt writes: > For some reason, git-describe only prints a description relative to > the last tag that was a tag object (and not just a ref). > This is kinda a bug to me, what do others think? There is an option to tell git-describe to allow using non annotated tags, but that is not a defult. This is a very deliberate design decision. Annotated tags are meant for public consumption, but lightweight tags are often used to locally mark points that are interesting during this current development session (e.g. "I am trying to improve by first breaking and then enhancing, and this one was the last-known working one"), and it is mighty annoying if such a tag is used in describe output.