From: Jim Meyering Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:10:43 GMT Subject: Re: why the 'g' prefix on the SHA1 in git-describe output? Message-ID: <87ir4j71j0.fsf@rho.meyering.net> In-Reply-To: <472C915E.8070205@op5.se> Andreas Ericsson wrote: > Lars Hjemli wrote: >> On Nov 3, 2007 1:25 PM, Jim Meyering wrote: >>> Can anyone tell me what motivated adding the 'g' prefix on the SHA1 in >>> git-describe output? >> >> I'm not sure what _motivated_ the 'g', but currently git-rev-parse >> understands the output from git-describe _if_ the 'g' is present. >> > > It's been there since 908e5310b958619559d34b0b6da122f058faa47e, which > has the commit-subject 'Add a "git-describe" command'. > > I think it'd be more trouble removing it now than it is to keep it, > since a lot of script depend on it being there for parsing out > versioning info in various autobuild- and release scripts. > > If you want to change it, I'd suggest adding a "--no-sha1" option > that makes the entire "-g%s" part of the output go away, or > perhaps adding a --format="%v-%d-%g" (for the default behaviour). Thanks to both of you for the feedback. FYI, I didn't propose to change it in git. I was wondering whether to restore the 'g' in snapshot version numbers for coreutils, autoconf, etc.: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.autoconf.general/9784/focus=9811 Since coreutils version strings will end up having at least one more "." (currently they look like this: 6.9-375-3e3f8), that means transforming a version string into input for git-rev-parse will require the reverse xform. Once you're doing some transformation, an additional one to insert the required 'g' is no big deal, so I expect to continue omitting the 'g' from version strings: makes file names 1 byte shorter.