Re: Funny 'git describe --contains' output

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 29, 2012, 05:57 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr4qqxmt8.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120829044840.GA25869@kroah.com>

Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> In the Linux kernel tree, commit 0136db586c028f71e7cc21cc183064ff0d5919
> is a bit "odd".
>
> If I go to look to see what release it was in, I normally do:
> 	$ git describe --contains 0136db586c028f71e7cc21cc183064ff0d5919
> 	v3.6-rc1~59^2~56^2~76
> ...
> Any ideas?

That is 59 + 1 + 56 + 1 + 76 = 193 steps away from the tag v3.6-rc1.

$ git name-rev --refs=refs/tags/v3.5-rc1 0136db58 0136db58 tags/v3.5-rc1~83^2~81^2~76

which is 83 + 1 + 81 + 1 + 76 = 242 steps away from that tag.

So it _is_ odd that the newly tagged tip merged a branch that had smaller development since it merged the commit, but name-rev seems to be measuring the steps it takes from the tags to reach the commit and giving us the one that gives the shortest path correctly.

Obviously, that is not the same as "which tag is the oldest one among the ones that can reach this commit?"