# Retrieving last tag of a working tree 3 messages from 2008-12-18 to 2008-12-21. Participants: the_jack, Sitaram Chamarty, Thomas Rast. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/16782 ## the_jack, 2008-12-18 12:07 Subject: Retrieving last tag of a working tree Message-ID: <21071491.post@talk.nabble.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/21071491.post%40talk.nabble.com ``` I'm using msys git on Windows XP for version tracking embedded design project in C. I mostly work with GUIs (git-gui and qgit), I use bash only when I have to. I need to be able to access version from software. To do that, I use tags to mark all released versions, and that version string is written to file version.h (the file is not tracked) by pre-build command: #define KDK_SOFTWARE_VERSION "0.72" Precompiler assigns this string to a variable. At this moment, version.h is filled by python script that calls "git-describe --tag HEAD" and parses the output. This works, but it's not quite reliable. There has to be a better way for getting the last tag of current working tree. If I checkout an earlier tagged version (0.70), I would need to automatically get 0.70 inside version.h Can anyone shed any light on this? -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Retrieving-last-tag-of-a-working-tree-tp21071491p21071491.html Sent from the git mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ``` ## Sitaram Chamarty, 2008-12-21 14:53 Subject: Re: Retrieving last tag of a working tree Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/slrngksm2t.p3b.sitaramc%40sitaramc.homelinux.net In-Reply-To: <21071491.post@talk.nabble.com> ``` On 2008-12-18, the_jack wrote: > > output. This works, but it's not quite reliable. There has to be a better > way for getting the last tag of current working tree. If I checkout an git describe? ``` ## Thomas Rast, 2008-12-21 15:28 Subject: Re: Retrieving last tag of a working tree Message-ID: <200812211628.59120.trast@student.ethz.ch> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200812211628.59120.trast%40student.ethz.ch In-Reply-To: <21071491.post@talk.nabble.com> ``` the_jack wrote: > Precompiler assigns this string to a variable. At this moment, version.h is > filled by python script that calls "git-describe --tag HEAD" and parses the > output. This works, but it's not quite reliable. There has to be a better > way for getting the last tag of current working tree. If I checkout an > earlier tagged version (0.70), I would need to automatically get 0.70 inside > version.h 'git describe' is indeed the tool for this. You have not said in what way it fails, so here's an educated guess: Up until 7e425c4 (describe: Make --tags and --all match lightweight tags more often, 2008-10-13) which will only be in 1.6.1, using --tags does not match a lightweight tag if there is also an annotated tag available. -Thomas -- Thomas Rast trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch ```