considered when it matches at least one --match pattern and does not
	match any of the --exclude patterns. Use `--no-exclude` to clear and
	reset the list of patterns.

--always::
	Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.

--first-parent::
	Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
	This is useful when you wish to not match tags on branches merged
	in the history of the target commit.

EXAMPLES
--------

With something like git.git current tree, I get:

	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
	v1.0.4-14-g2414721

i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4,
but since it has a few commits on top of that,
describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and
an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721")
at the end.

The number of additional commits is the number
of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent".
The hash suffix is "-g" + an unambiguous abbreviation for the tip commit
of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). The
length of the abbreviation scales as the repository grows, using the
approximate number of objects in the repository and a bit of math
around the birthday paradox, and defaults to a minimum of 7.
The "g" prefix stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version of
a software depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful
in an environment where people may use different SCMs.

Doing a 'git describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name:

	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
	v1.0.4

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

	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
	heads/lt/describe-7-g975b

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

	[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
	tags/v1.0.0

Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be
longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your
Git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with
975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not
be sufficient to disambiguate these commits.


SEARCH STRATEGY
---------------

For each commit-ish supplied, 'git describe' will first look for
a tag which tags exactly that commit.  Annotated tags will always
be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will
always be preferred over tags with older dates.  If an exact match
is found, its name will be output and searching will stop.

If an exact match was not found, 'git describe' will walk back
through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which
has been tagged.  The ancestor's tag will be output along with an
abbreviation of the input commit-ish's SHA-1. If `--first-parent` was
specified then the walk will only consider the first parent of each
commit.

If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which
has the fewest commits different from the input commit-ish will be
selected and output.  Here fewest commits different is defined as
the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input`
will be the smallest number of commits possible.

BUGS
----

Tree objects as well as tag objects not pointing at commits, cannot be described.
When describing blobs, the lightweight tags pointing at blobs are ignored,
but the blob is still described as <commit-ish>:<path> despite the lightweight
tag being favorable.

GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite