Subject: Re: [RFD PATCH 3/3] name-rev: Allow lightweight tags and branch refs

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:14:35 -0700

Michael J Gruber <[email-masked]> writes:

> Consider the following:
> ...
> "git describe past present future" gives
>
> past
> past-1-g5ad942f
> future
>
> because (as documented) it does not consider lightweight tags, and thus
> has to describe present from the past.
>
> "git describe --tags past present future" gives
>
> past
> present
> future
> 
> because (as documented) it does consider lightweight tags.
>
> "git describe --contains past present future" gives
>
> past^0
> future~1
> future^0

Nice illustration to convince anybody that "git describe --tags
--contains" should give "past present future" (or "past^0 present
future^0").  I am not sure if it is a good idea in general to change
the output to include "present" when "--tags" is not given, though.

For _this_ example, it does give us a more useful result, but the
example was to constructed to illustrate the case where the new
behaviour is more useful, and does not serve to convince us that it
won't have negative impact X-<.