What is the Git equivalent for revision number?

With modern Git (1.8.3.4 in my case) and not using branches you can do:

$ git rev-list --count HEAD
68

But this has all kinds of issues and might not be easy to reproduce or easy to get back to the commit hash in case you need to. So try to avoid it or use it only as a hint.

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.