# bug report/feature request: git describe: what is 'clean'

2 messages from 2020-12-01 to 2020-12-01. Participants: Ernst Reissner, Junio C Hamano.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/54740

## Ernst Reissner, 2020-12-01 10:46

Subject: bug report/feature request: git describe: what is 'clean'
Message-ID: <ed404c7e-d098-348d-d8fe-dae8aa5a5fda@arcor.de>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/ed404c7e-d098-348d-d8fe-dae8aa5a5fda%40arcor.de

```
Hello All,

find below a bug report/feature request.

Regards,

Ernst


Thank you for filling out a Git bug report!
Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue.

What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)
i have a workspace with untracked files, else clean.
then i did `git describe`.
What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior)
I expected to see a label 'dirty'
What happened instead? (Actual behavior)
no label `dirty`
What's different between what you expected and what actually happened?
obvious
Anything else you want to add:
I know that this is not precisely a bug,
Instead it is a feature request.
Practically, `git describe` is used to determine a version.
For me the sense of 'dirty' is to indicate that this deliverable is not 
reproducible from the repo.
Thus it may not be delivered to a customer.
So in this sense, untracked files make a workspace dirty also.

Without the need of backward compatibility, i would say, dirty is all,
which is tracked and modified staged or not,
or which is untracked but not ignored.

To keep backward compatibility,
maybe it is a good idea to add a second suffix, maybe 'untracked' to 
display in addition.
That way it is clear: only if no suffix is present, software from repo 
can be delivered
and one is sure that this is reproducible.

Please review the rest of the bug report below.
You can delete any lines you don't wish to share.


[System Info]
git version:
git version 2.29.2
cpu: x86_64
no commit associated with this build
sizeof-long: 8
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: /bin/sh
uname: Linux 5.9.1-2-default #1 SMP Mon Oct 26 07:02:23 UTC 2020 
(435e92d) x86_64
compiler info: gnuc: 10.2
libc info: glibc: 2.32
$SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /bin/bash




```

## Junio C Hamano, 2020-12-01 20:03

Subject: Re: bug report/feature request: git describe: what is 'clean'
Message-ID: <xmqqh7p5pa3m.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/xmqqh7p5pa3m.fsf%40gitster.c.googlers.com
In-Reply-To: <ed404c7e-d098-348d-d8fe-dae8aa5a5fda@arcor.de>

```
Ernst Reissner <rei3ner@arcor.de> writes:

> To keep backward compatibility,
> maybe it is a good idea to add a second suffix, maybe 'untracked' to
> display in addition.

It won't work for folks who have used output from "describe --dirty"
as the base of their version number, as their procedure do not know
they need to strip "-untracked" at the end.  

A new option, "describe --dirty --untracked", is possible, though.

```