Question

we have a build system that uses the svn ID as an imput to a VM builder appliance that required a five digit number. When I build from git I have been faking this by counting the number of commits in the git repo. This only sort-of-works :-/ I’m tyring to figure out:

• how can I get a unique 5 digit number from the git repo.

Answer 1

You’re looking for git describe:

The command finds the most recent tag
that is reachable from a commit. If
the tag points to the commit, then
only the tag is shown. Otherwise, it
suffixes the tag name with the number
of additional commits on top of the
tagged object and the abbreviated
object name of the most recent commit.

$ git describe master
v1.10-5-g4efc7e1