git-describe

git-describe

This Node.js module runs git describe on the working directory or any other directory and parses the output to individual components. Additionally, if your tags follow semantic versioning the semver will be parsed and supplemented with the git describe information as build metadata.

Because this module is primarily meant for init sequences and the like, it only offers a straightforward synchronous API.

Installation

Available from npm: npm install git-describe

Usage

The module exports a function taking an optional directory (defaults to working directory) and an optional options object. It returns an object containing the parsed information, or throws an Error if the git command fails.

var gitDescribe = require('git-describe');

// Target working directory
var gitInfo = gitDescribe();

// Target the directory of the calling script
// Do this when you want to target the repo your app resides in
var gitInfo = gitDescribe(__dirname);

// With options (see below)
var gitInfo = gitDescribe(__dirname, {
    longSemver: true,
    dirtySemver: false
});

// Another example: working directory, use 16 character commit hash abbreviation
var gitInfo = gitDescribe({
    customArguments: ['--abbrev=16']
});

Example output

{ dirty: false,
  hash: 'g3c9c15b',
  distance: 6,
  tag: 'v2.1.0-beta',
  semver: SemVer, // SemVer instance, see https://github.com/npm/node-semver
  suffix: '6-g3c9c15b',
  raw: 'v2.1.0-beta-6-g3c9c15b',
  semverString: '2.1.0-beta+6.g3c9c15b' }

Options

Option	Default	Description
dirtySemver	true	Appends '.dirty' to semverString if repo state is dirty (similar to --dirty).
longSemver	false	Always add commit distance and hash to semverString (similar to --long).
requireAnnotated	false	Uses --tags if false, so that simple git tags are allowed.
match	'v[0-9]*'	Uses --match to filter tag names. By default only tags resembling a version number are considered.
customArguments	[]	Array of additional arguments to pass to git describe. Not all arguments are useful and some may even break the library, but things like --abbrev and --candidates should be safe to add.