describe: teach describe negative pattern matches
Teach git-describe the `--exclude` option which will allow specifying
a glob pattern of tags to ignore. This can be combined with the
`--match` patterns to enable more flexibility in determining which tags
to consider.
For example, suppose you wish to find the first official release tag
that contains a certain commit. If we assume that official release tags
are of the form "v*" and pre-release candidates include "*rc*" in their
name, we can now find the first release tag that introduces the commit
abcdef:
git describe --contains --match="v*" --exclude="*rc*" abcdef
Add documentation, tests, and completion for this change.
Signed-off-by: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
index 7ad41e2..8755f3a 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
@@ -88,6 +88,16 @@
patterns will be considered. Use `--no-match` to clear and reset the
list of patterns.
+--exclude <pattern>::
+ Do not consider tags matching the given `glob(7)` pattern, excluding
+ the "refs/tags/" prefix. This can be used to narrow the tag space and
+ find only tags matching some meaningful criteria. If given multiple
+ times, a list of patterns will be accumulated and tags matching any
+ of the patterns will be excluded. When combined with --match a tag will
+ be 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.
