Re: Remote git-describe ?

["Francis Moreau" <francis.moro@gmail.com>]

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> "Francis Moreau" <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> ... Givinig that I would use it to describe the HEAD of the kernel repo:
>>
>>        $ git describe --remote=<git-server> HEAD
>>
>> this would make the server parse all commits between HEAD and the
>> closest tag which seems to me a lot cheaper than downloading the whole
>> repo...
>
> Do you mean you want to have the server describe the HEAD the
> server side has (not the HEAD in your repository)?  Why?
>

yes. see below...

> I suspect the real motivation of your question lies elsewhere
> and not in "describe".
>
> Suppose we had such a service on the server side, and you asked
> the server twice and got these (at different times, of course):
>
> 	v2.6.20-rc5-g419dd83
> 	v2.6.20-rc5-gde14569
>
> What useful information can you get between the two?
>
> Nothing.
>

I agree in the context I gave, it's useless.

>
> So I suspect what you are after is not about using describe
> remotely or describing where the HEAD is; you want to know if
> there is a new tag near the tip since the last time you checked.
>

Actually I'd like to generate an archive from a git server. And
I want to give the name of the archive file, the ouptut given by
'git describe'.

Since I can pass --remote to 'git archive', I do not need anymore
to clone the repo before generating the archive. But I still needs
it only to run 'git describe' thus my question...

thanks
-- 
Francis