[PATCH] More precise description of 'git describe --abbrev'

From

Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>

Date

Oct 29, 2009, 21:38 UTC

Message-ID

<b48ea8a00910291438r8b66a0fq9e821393ecfff0bf@mail.gmail.com>

Signed-off-by: Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
---
 Documentation/git-describe.txt |   12 +++++++-----
 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
index b231dbb..743eb95 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
@@ -44,7 +44,9 @@ OPTIONS

 --abbrev=<n>::
 	Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
-	abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
+	abbreviated object name, use <n> digits or as many digits
+	are needed to form a unique object name.  An <n> of 0
+	will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag.

 --candidates=<n>::
 	Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
@@ -68,8 +70,8 @@ OPTIONS
 	This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name
 	in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be
 	a tagged version.  Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will
-	describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2
-	that points at object deadbeef....).
+	describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2
+	that points at object deadbee....).

 --match <pattern>::
 	Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid
@@ -106,10 +108,10 @@ With --all, the command can use branch heads as
references, so
 the output shows the reference path as well:

 	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
-	tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b
+	tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b3

 	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^
-	heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
+	heads/lt/describe-7-g975b31d

 With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
 closest tagname without any suffix:

-- 
1.6.2.95.g934f7