title: What does peel mean in Git?
body: <p>In trying to understand <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7501646/jgit-retrieve-tag-associated-with-a-git-commit">JGit: Retrieve tag associated with a git commit</a>, I arrived at this thread on the JGit mailing list:
  <a href="http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/jgit-dev/msg01706.html" rel="noreferrer">[jgit-dev] Commits and tags</a>.</p>
  
  <p>In this thread they refer to the <a href="http://download.eclipse.org/jgit/site/3.5.1.201410131835-r/apidocs/org/eclipse/jgit/lib/Repository.html#peel(org.eclipse.jgit.lib.Ref)" rel="noreferrer"><code>peel</code></a> method of <code>org.eclipse.jgit.lib.Repository</code>:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Peel a possibly unpeeled reference to an annotated tag.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I could only find two mentions of peeling in the Git documentation: <a href="http://git-scm.com/docs/git-check-ref-format" rel="noreferrer">git-check-ref-format(1) Manual Page</a> and <a href="http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Internals-Maintenance-and-Data-Recovery" rel="noreferrer">Git Internals - Maintenance and Data Recovery</a>.</p>
  
  <p>What does the term peel mean in Git? How is it useful?  What does it have to do with <em>onions</em>?</p>