What is the Git equivalent for revision number

Question

We use SVN at work  but for my personal projects I decided to use Git  So I installed Git yesterday  and I wonder what is the revision number equivalent in Git   Let s say we work on version 3 0 8 and every bug fix has its own revision number we can use when we talk about this bug fix  So if I tag the code in Git to 3 0 8 what then I can use as a revision number or some other more detailed kind of identification  I find the hash not so user friendly for humans

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The problem with using the git hash as the build number is that it s not monotonically increasing  OSGi suggests using a time-stamp for the build number  It looks like the number of commits to the branch could be used in place of the subversion or perforce change number

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Each commit has a unique hash  Other than that there are no revision numbers in git  You ll have to tag commits yourself if you want more user-friendliness

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Along with the SHA-1 id of the commit  date and time of the server time would have helped   Something like this      commit happened at 11 30 25 on 19 aug 2013 would show as   6886bbb7be18e63fc4be68ba41917b48f02e09d7 19aug2013 113025

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Post build event for Visual Studio  echo   gt RevisionNumber cs static class Git   public static int RevisionNumber   git   gt  gt RevisionNumber cs rev-list --count HEAD echo  gt  gt RevisionNumber cs

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We re using this command to get version and revision from git   git describe --always --tags --dirty   It returns   commit hash as revision when no tagging is used  e g  gcc7b71f  tag name as version when on a tag  e g  v2 1 0  used for releases  tag name  revision number since last tag and commit hash when after a tag  e g  v5 3 0-88-gcc7b71f  same as above plus a  dirty  tag if the working tree has local modifications  e g  v5 3 0-88-gcc7b71f-dirty    See also  https   www git-scm com docs git-describe Documentation git-describe txt

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From the Git manual  tags are a brilliant answer to this issue      Creating an annotated tag in Git is simple  The easiest way is to   specify -a when you run the tag command         git tag -a v1 4 -m  my version 1 4      git tag v0 1 v1 3 v1 4   Check out 2 6 Git Basics - Tagging

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Consider to use   git-rev-label    Gives information about Git repository revision in format like master-c73-gabc6bec  Can fill template string or file with environment variables and information from Git  Useful to provide information about version of the program  branch  tag  commit hash  commits count  dirty status  date and time  One of the most useful things is count of commits  not taking into account merged branches - only first parent

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If you re interested  I managed version numbers automatically from git infos here under the format    lt major gt   lt minor gt   lt patch gt -b lt build gt    where build is the total number of commits  You ll see the interesting code in the Makefile  Here is the relevant part to access the different part of the version number   LAST TAG COMMIT     shell git rev-list --tags --max-count 1  LAST TAG     shell git describe --tags   LAST TAG COMMIT    TAG PREFIX    latex-tutorial-v   VERSION      shell head VERSION    OR try to guess directly from the last git tag  VERSION        shell  git describe --tags   LAST TAG COMMIT    sed  s    TAG PREFIX      MAJOR          shell echo   VERSION    sed  s     0-9        1    MINOR          shell echo   VERSION    sed  s  0-9       0-9        1    PATCH          shell echo   VERSION    sed  s  0-9     0-9       0-9        1      total number of commits        BUILD          shell git log --oneline   wc -l   sed -e  s    t    g     REVISION       shell git rev-list   LAST TAG    --count   ROOTDIR        shell git rev-parse --show-toplevel  NEXT MAJOR VERSION     shell expr   MAJOR    1  0 0-b  BUILD  NEXT MINOR VERSION     MAJOR    shell expr   MINOR    1  0-b  BUILD  NEXT PATCH VERSION     MAJOR    MINOR    shell expr   PATCH    1 -b  BUILD

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This is what I did in my makefile based on others solutions  Note not only does this give your code a revision number  it also appends the hash which allows you to recreate the release     Set the source control revision similar to subversion to use in  c    files as a define    You must build in the master branch otherwise the build branch will   be prepended to the revision and or  dirty  appended  This is to   clearly ID developer builds  REPO REVISION     shell git rev-list HEAD --count  BUILD BRANCH    shell git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD  BUILD REV ID    shell git rev-parse HEAD  BUILD REV ID SHORT    shell git describe --long --tags --dirty --always  ifeq    BUILD BRANCH   master  REPO REVISION    REPO REVISION   g  BUILD REV ID SHORT  else REPO REVISION    BUILD BRANCH    REPO REVISION   r  BUILD REV ID SHORT  endif export REPO REVISION export BUILD BRANCH export BUILD REV ID

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The git describe command creates a slightly more human readable name that refers to a specific commit  For example  from the documentation      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    As long as you use sensibly named tags to tag particular releases  this can be considered to be roughly equivalent to a SVN  revision number

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The SHA1 hash of the commit is the equivalent to a Subversion revision number

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Good or bad news for you  that hash IS the revision number   I also had trouble with this when I made the switch from SVN to git   You can use  tagging  in git to tag a certain revision as the  release  for a specific version  making it easy to refer to that revision   Check out this blog post   The key thing to understand is that git cannot have revision numbers - think about the decentralized nature   If users A and B are both committing to their local repositories  how can git reasonably assign a sequential revision number   A has no knowledge of B before they push pull each other s changes   Another thing to look at is simplified branching for bugfix branches   Start with a release  3 0 8   Then  after that release  do this   git branch bugfixes308   This will create a branch for bugfixes   Checkout the branch   git checkout bugfixes308   Now make any bugfix changes you want   git commit -a   Commit them  and switch back to the master branch   git checkout master   Then pull in those changes from the other branch   git merge bugfixes308   That way  you have a separate release-specific bugfix branch  but you re still pulling the bugfix changes into your main dev trunk

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I d just like to note another possible approach - and that is by using git git-notes 1   in existence since v 1 6 6  Note to Self - Git   I m using git version 1 7 9 5    Basically  I used git svn to clone an SVN repository with linear history  no standard layout  no branches  no tags   and I wanted to compare revision numbers in the cloned git repository  This git clone doesn t have tags by default  so I cannot use git describe  The strategy here likely would work only for linear history - not sure how it would turn out with merges etc   but here is the basic strategy    Ask git rev-list for list of all commit history   Since rev-list is by default in  reverse chronological order   we d use its --reverse switch to get list of commits sorted by oldest first  Use bash shell to   increase a counter variable on each commit as a revision counter  generate and add a  temporary  git note for each commit  Then  browse the log by using git log with --notes  which will also dump a commit s note  which in this case would be the  revision number  When done  erase the temporary notes  NB  I m not sure if these notes are committed or not  they don t really show in git status    First  let s note that git has a default location of notes - but you can also specify a ref erence  for notes - which would store them in a different directory under  git  for instance  while in a git repo folder  you can call git notes get-ref to see what directory that will be     git notes get-ref refs notes commits   git notes --ref whatever get-ref refs notes whatever   The thing to be noted is that if you notes add with a --ref  you must also afterwards use that reference again - otherwise you may get errors like  No note found for object XXX       For this example  I have chosen to call the ref of the notes  linrev   for linear revision  - this also means it is not likely the procedure will interfere with already existing notes  I am also using the --git-dir switch  since being a git newbie  I had some problems understanding it - so I d like to  remember for later      and I also use --no-pager to suppress spawning of less when using git log   So  assuming you re in a directory  with a subfolder  myrepo git which is a git repository  one could do       check for already existing notes     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes show   error  No note found for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33    git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev show   error  No note found for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33       iterate through rev-list three  oldest first      create a cmdline adding a revision count as note to each revision    ix 0  for ih in   git --git-dir   myrepo git  git rev-list --reverse HEAD   do     TCMD  git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev       TCMD   TCMD add  ih -m    r     ix            echo   TCMD       eval   TCMD     done    git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev add 6886bbb7be18e63fc4be68ba41917b48f02e09d7 -m   r1     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev add f34910dbeeee33a40806d29dd956062d6ab3ad97 -m   r2           git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev add 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33 -m   r15        check status - adding notes seem to not affect it     cd myrepo git    git status     On branch master   nothing to commit  working directory clean    cd          check notes again     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes show   error  No note found for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33    git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev show    r15       note is saved - now let s issue a  git log  command  using a format string and notes     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git --no-pager log --notes linrev --format format   h   an   ad    gt  gt  s lt  lt   N  HEAD   04051f9   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 02 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 15  lt  lt   r15    77f3902   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 00 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 14 lt  lt   r14          6886bbb   user   Sun Apr 21 17 11 52 2013  0000    gt  gt initial test message 1 lt  lt   r1       test git log with range     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git --no-pager log --notes linrev --format format   h   an   ad    gt  gt  s lt  lt   N  HEAD   HEAD   04051f9   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 02 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 15  lt  lt   r15       erase notes - again must iterate through rev-list    ix 0  for ih in   git --git-dir   myrepo git  git rev-list --reverse HEAD   do     TCMD  git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev       TCMD   TCMD remove  ih       echo   TCMD       eval   TCMD     done   git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev remove 6886bbb7be18e63fc4be68ba41917b48f02e09d7   Removing note for object 6886bbb7be18e63fc4be68ba41917b48f02e09d7   git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev remove f34910dbeeee33a40806d29dd956062d6ab3ad97   Removing note for object f34910dbeeee33a40806d29dd956062d6ab3ad97         git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev remove 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33   Removing note for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33      check notes again     git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes show   error  No note found for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33    git --git-dir   myrepo git  git notes --ref linrev show   error  No note found for object 04051f98ece25cff67e62d13c548dacbee6c1e33    So  at least in my specific case of fully linear history with no branches  the revision numbers seem to match with this approach - and additionally  it seems that this approach will allow using git log with revision ranges  while still getting the right revision numbers - YMMV with a different context  though     Hope this helps someone  Cheers     EDIT  Ok  here it is a bit easier  with git aliases for the above loops  called setlinrev and unsetlinrev  when in your git repository folder  do  Note the nasty bash escaping  see also  16136745 - Add a Git alias containing a semicolon     cat  gt  gt   git config  lt  lt  EOF   alias    setlinrev     bash -c  ix 0  for ih in   git rev-list --reverse HEAD   do  n        TCMD   git notes --ref linrev     n        TCMD    TCMD add  ih -m      r       ix            n         echo    TCMD     n        eval    TCMD     n      done   n      echo   Linear revision notes are set          unsetlinrev     bash -c  ix 0  for ih in   git rev-list --reverse HEAD   do  n        TCMD   git notes --ref linrev     n        TCMD    TCMD remove  ih     n         echo    TCMD     n        eval    TCMD 2 gt  dev null     n      done   n      echo   Linear revision notes are unset       EOF       so you can simply invoke git setlinrev before trying to do log involving linear revision notes  and git unsetlinrev to delete those notes when you re done  an example from inside the git repo directory     git log --notes linrev --format format   h   an   ad    gt  gt  s lt  lt   N  HEAD   HEAD 04051f9   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 02 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 15  lt  lt     git setlinrev Linear revision notes are set    git log --notes linrev --format format   h   an   ad    gt  gt  s lt  lt   N  HEAD   HEAD 04051f9   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 02 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 15  lt  lt   r15    git unsetlinrev Linear revision notes are unset     git log --notes linrev --format format   h   an   ad    gt  gt  s lt  lt   N  HEAD   HEAD 04051f9   user   Sun Apr 21 18 29 02 2013  0000    gt  gt test message 15  lt  lt    The time it would take the shell to complete these aliases  would depend on the size of the repository history

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For people who have an Ant build process  you can generate a version number for a project on git with this target    lt target name  generate-version  gt        lt exec executable  git  outputproperty  version revisions  gt           lt arg value  log   gt           lt arg value  --oneline   gt       lt  exec gt        lt resourcecount property  version revision  count  0  when  eq  gt           lt tokens gt               lt concat gt                   lt filterchain gt                       lt tokenfilter gt                           lt stringtokenizer delims   r    gt                       lt  tokenfilter gt                   lt  filterchain gt               lt propertyresource name  version revisions    gt               lt  concat gt           lt  tokens gt       lt  resourcecount gt       lt echo gt Revision     version revision  lt  echo gt        lt exec executable  git  outputproperty  version hash  gt           lt arg value  rev-parse   gt           lt arg value  --short   gt           lt arg value  HEAD   gt       lt  exec gt       lt echo gt Hash     version hash  lt  echo gt         lt exec executable  git  outputproperty  version branch  gt           lt arg value  rev-parse   gt           lt arg value  --abbrev-ref   gt           lt arg value  HEAD   gt       lt  exec gt       lt echo gt Branch     version branch  lt  echo gt        lt exec executable  git  outputproperty  version diff  gt           lt arg value  diff   gt       lt  exec gt        lt condition property  version dirty  value    else  -dirty  gt           lt equals arg1    version diff   arg2     gt       lt  condition gt        lt tstamp gt           lt format property  version date  pattern  yyyy-mm-dd HH mm ss  locale  en US   gt       lt  tstamp gt       lt echo gt Date     version date  lt  echo gt        lt property name  version  value    version revision    version hash    version branch   version dirty    version date     gt        lt echo gt Version     version  lt  echo gt        lt echo file  version properties  append  false  gt version     version  lt  echo gt    lt  target gt    The result looks like this   generate-version       echo  Generate version      echo  Revision   47      echo  Hash   2af0b99      echo  Branch   master      echo  Date   2015-04-20 15 04 03      echo  Version   47 2af0b99 master-dirty 2015-04-20 15 04 03   The dirty flag is here when you have file s  not committed when you generate the version number  Because usually  when you build package your application  every code modification has to be in the repository

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A Bash function   git rev          d  date   Y m d      c  git rev-list --full-history --all --abbrev-commit   wc -l   sed -e  s             h  git rev-list --full-history --all --abbrev-commit   head -1      echo   c    h    d      outputs something like    git rev 2 0f8e14e 20130220   That is  commit count last abbrev commit date YYmmdd

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I wrote some PowerShell utilities for retrieving version information from Git and simplifying tagging  functions  Get-LastVersion  Get-Revision  Get-NextMajorVersion  Get-NextMinorVersion  TagNextMajorVersion  TagNextMinorVersion     Returns the last version by analysing existing tags    assumes an initial tag is present  and   assumes tags are named v major   minor    revision     function Get-LastVersion       lastTagCommit   git rev-list --tags --max-count 1    lastTag   git describe --tags  lastTagCommit    tagPrefix    v     versionString    lastTag -replace   tagPrefix        Write-Host -NoNewline  last tagged commit     Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor  yellow   lastTag   Write-Host -NoNewline   revision     Write-Host -ForegroundColor  yellow    lastTagCommit     reflection assembly   LoadWithPartialName  System Version       version   New-Object System Version  versionString    return  version       Returns current revision by counting the number of commits to HEAD function Get-Revision        lastTagCommit   git rev-list HEAD     revs    git rev-list  lastTagCommit    Measure-Object -Line    return  revs Lines      Returns the next major version  major   minor   revision  function Get-NextMajorVersion         version   Get-LastVersion       reflection assembly   LoadWithPartialName  System Version        int   major    version Major 1       rev   Get-Revision      nextMajor   New-Object System Version  major  0   rev       return  nextMajor       Returns the next minor version  major   minor   revision  function Get-NextMinorVersion         version   Get-LastVersion       reflection assembly   LoadWithPartialName  System Version        int   minor    version Minor 1       rev   Get-Revision      next   New-Object System Version  version Major   minor   rev       return  next       Creates a tag with the next minor version function TagNextMinorVersion  tagMessage        version   Get-NextMinorVersion       tagName    v 0   -f   version  Trim        Write-Host -NoNewline  Tagging next minor version to        Write-Host -ForegroundColor DarkYellow   tagName       git tag -a  tagName -m  tagMessage      Creates a tag with the next major version  minor version starts again at 0  function TagNextMajorVersion  tagMessage        version   Get-NextMajorVersion       tagName    v 0   -f   version  Trim        Write-Host -NoNewline  Tagging next majo version to        Write-Host -ForegroundColor DarkYellow   tagName       git tag -a  tagName -m  tagMessage

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With modern Git  1 8 3 4 in my case  and not using branches you can do     git rev-list --count HEAD 68

User · Answer

The other posters are right  there is no  revision-number    I think the best way is to use Tags for  releases    But I made use of the following to fake revision numbers  just for clients to see revisions and the progress  as they wanted to have the same increasing revisions from git as they where use to by subversion    Show the  current revision  of  HEAD  is simulated by using this   git rev-list HEAD   wc -l  But what if the client tells me that there is a bug in  revision  1302    For this I added the following to the  alias  section of my    gitconfig   show-rev-number    sh -c  git rev-list --reverse HEAD   nl   awk     if    1      0     print    2        using git show-rev-number 1302 will then print the hash for the  revision      I made a Blog Post  in german  about that  technique  some time ago

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Git does not have the same concept of revision numbers as subversion  Instead each given snapshot made with a commit is tagged by a SHA1 checksum  Why  There are several problems with a running revno in a distributed version control system   First  since development is not linear at all  the attachment of a number is rather hard as a problem to solve in a way which will satisfy your need as a programmer  Trying to fix this by adding a number might quickly become problematic when the number does not behave as you expect   Second  revision numbers may be generated on different machines  This makes synchronization of numbers much harder - especially since connectivity is one-way  you may not even have access to all machines that has the repository   Third  in git  somewhat pioneered by the now defunct OpenCM system  the identity of a commit  what the commit is  is equivalent to its name  the SHA id   This naming   identity concept is very strong  When you sit with a commit name in hand it also identifies the commit in an unforgeable way  This in turn lets you check all of your commits back to the first initial one for corruption with the git fsck command   Now  since we have a DAG  Directed Acyclic Graph  of revisions and these constitute the current tree  we need some tools to solve your problem  How do we discriminate different versions  First  you can omit part of the hash if a given prefix  1516bd say  uniquely identifies your commit  But this is also rather contrived  Instead  the trick is to use tags and or branches  A tag or branch is akin to a  yellow stick it note  you attach to a given commit SHA1-id  Tags are  in essence  meant to be non-moving whereas a branch will move when new commits are made to its HEAD  There are ways to refer to a commit around a tag or branch  see the man page of git-rev-parse   Usually  if you need to work on a specific piece of code  that piece is undergoing changes and should as such be a branch with a saying topic name  Creating lots of branches  20-30 per programmer is not unheard of  with some 4-5 published for others to work on  is the trick for effective git  Every piece of work should start as its own branch and then be merged in when it is tested  Unpublished branches can be rewritten entirely and this part of destroying history is a force of git   When the change is accepted into master it somewhat freezes and becomes archeology  At that point  you can tag it  but more often a reference to the particular commit is made in a bug tracker or issue tracker via the sha1 sum  Tags tend to be reserved for version bumps and branch points for maintenance branches  for old versions

[git] What is the Git equivalent for revision number?

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