1GIT-TAG(1) Git Manual GIT-TAG(1)
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6 git-tag - Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG
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9 git tag [-a | -s | -u <keyid>] [-f] [-m <msg> | -F <file>] [-e]
10 <tagname> [<commit> | <object>]
11 git tag -d <tagname>...
12 git tag [-n[<num>]] -l [--contains <commit>] [--no-contains <commit>]
13 [--points-at <object>] [--column[=<options>] | --no-column]
14 [--create-reflog] [--sort=<key>] [--format=<format>]
15 [--[no-]merged [<commit>]] [<pattern>...]
16 git tag -v [--format=<format>] <tagname>...
17
20 Add a tag reference in refs/tags/, unless -d/-l/-v is given to delete,
21 list or verify tags.
22 Unless -f is given, the named tag must not yet exist.
24 If one of -a, -s, or -u <keyid> is passed, the command creates a tag
26 object, and requires a tag message. Unless -m <msg> or -F <file> is
27 given, an editor is started for the user to type in the tag message.
28 If -m <msg> or -F <file> is given and -a, -s, and -u <keyid> are
30 absent, -a is implied.
31 Otherwise, a tag reference that points directly at the given object
33 (i.e., a lightweight tag) is created.
34 A GnuPG signed tag object will be created when -s or -u <keyid> is
36 used. When -u <keyid> is not used, the committer identity for the
37 current user is used to find the GnuPG key for signing. The
38 configuration variable gpg.program is used to specify custom GnuPG
39 binary.
40 Tag objects (created with -a, -s, or -u) are called "annotated" tags;
42 they contain a creation date, the tagger name and e-mail, a tagging
43 message, and an optional GnuPG signature. Whereas a "lightweight" tag
44 is simply a name for an object (usually a commit object).
45 Annotated tags are meant for release while lightweight tags are meant
47 for private or temporary object labels. For this reason, some git
48 commands for naming objects (like git describe) will ignore lightweight
49 tags by default.
50
52 -a, --annotate
53 Make an unsigned, annotated tag object
54 -s, --sign
56 Make a GPG-signed tag, using the default e-mail address’s key.
57 -u <keyid>, --local-user=<keyid>
59 Make a GPG-signed tag, using the given key.
60 -f, --force
62 Replace an existing tag with the given name (instead of failing)
63 -d, --delete
65 Delete existing tags with the given names.
66 -v, --verify
68 Verify the GPG signature of the given tag names.
69 -n<num>
71 <num> specifies how many lines from the annotation, if any, are
72 printed when using -l. Implies --list.
73 The default is not to print any annotation lines. If no number is
75 given to -n, only the first line is printed. If the tag is not
76 annotated, the commit message is displayed instead.
77 -l, --list
79 List tags. With optional <pattern>..., e.g. git tag --list 'v-*',
80 list only the tags that match the pattern(s).
81 Running "git tag" without arguments also lists all tags. The
83 pattern is a shell wildcard (i.e., matched using fnmatch(3)).
84 Multiple patterns may be given; if any of them matches, the tag is
85 shown.
86 This option is implicitly supplied if any other list-like option
88 such as --contains is provided. See the documentation for each of
89 those options for details.
90 --sort=<key>
92 Sort based on the key given. Prefix - to sort in descending order
93 of the value. You may use the --sort=<key> option multiple times,
94 in which case the last key becomes the primary key. Also supports
95 "version:refname" or "v:refname" (tag names are treated as
96 versions). The "version:refname" sort order can also be affected by
97 the "versionsort.suffix" configuration variable. The keys supported
98 are the same as those in git for-each-ref. Sort order defaults to
99 the value configured for the tag.sort variable if it exists, or
100 lexicographic order otherwise. See git-config(1).
101 --color[=<when>]: Respect any colors specified in the --format option.
103 The <when> field must be one of always, never, or auto (if <when> is
104 absent, behave as if always was given).
105 -i, --ignore-case
107 Sorting and filtering tags are case insensitive.
108 --column[=<options>], --no-column
110 Display tag listing in columns. See configuration variable
111 column.tag for option syntax.--column and --no-column without
112 options are equivalent to always and never respectively.
113 This option is only applicable when listing tags without annotation
115 lines.
116 --contains [<commit>]
118 Only list tags which contain the specified commit (HEAD if not
119 specified). Implies --list.
120 --no-contains [<commit>]
122 Only list tags which don’t contain the specified commit (HEAD if
123 not specified). Implies --list.
124 --merged [<commit>]
126 Only list tags whose commits are reachable from the specified
127 commit (HEAD if not specified), incompatible with --no-merged.
128 --no-merged [<commit>]
130 Only list tags whose commits are not reachable from the specified
131 commit (HEAD if not specified), incompatible with --merged.
132 --points-at <object>
134 Only list tags of the given object (HEAD if not specified). Implies
135 --list.
136 -m <msg>, --message=<msg>
138 Use the given tag message (instead of prompting). If multiple -m
139 options are given, their values are concatenated as separate
140 paragraphs. Implies -a if none of -a, -s, or -u <keyid> is given.
141 -F <file>, --file=<file>
143 Take the tag message from the given file. Use - to read the message
144 from the standard input. Implies -a if none of -a, -s, or -u
145 <keyid> is given.
146 -e, --edit
148 The message taken from file with -F and command line with -m are
149 usually used as the tag message unmodified. This option lets you
150 further edit the message taken from these sources.
151 --cleanup=<mode>
153 This option sets how the tag message is cleaned up. The <mode> can
154 be one of verbatim, whitespace and strip. The strip mode is
155 default. The verbatim mode does not change message at all,
156 whitespace removes just leading/trailing whitespace lines and strip
157 removes both whitespace and commentary.
158 --create-reflog
160 Create a reflog for the tag. To globally enable reflogs for tags,
161 see core.logAllRefUpdates in git-config(1). The negated form
162 --no-create-reflog only overrides an earlier --create-reflog, but
163 currently does not negate the setting of core.logAllRefUpdates.
164 <tagname>
166 The name of the tag to create, delete, or describe. The new tag
167 name must pass all checks defined by git-check-ref-format(1). Some
168 of these checks may restrict the characters allowed in a tag name.
169 <commit>, <object>
171 The object that the new tag will refer to, usually a commit.
172 Defaults to HEAD.
173 <format>
175 A string that interpolates %(fieldname) from a tag ref being shown
176 and the object it points at. The format is the same as that of git-
177 for-each-ref(1). When unspecified, defaults to %(refname:strip=2).
178
180 By default, git tag in sign-with-default mode (-s) will use your
181 committer identity (of the form Your Name <your@email.address>) to find
182 a key. If you want to use a different default key, you can specify it
183 in the repository configuration as follows:
184 [user]
186 signingKey = <gpg-keyid>
187 pager.tag is only respected when listing tags, i.e., when -l is used or
190 implied. The default is to use a pager. See git-config(1).
191
193 On Re-tagging
194 What should you do when you tag a wrong commit and you would want to
195 re-tag?
196 If you never pushed anything out, just re-tag it. Use "-f" to replace
198 the old one. And you’re done.
199 But if you have pushed things out (or others could just read your
201 repository directly), then others will have already seen the old tag.
202 In that case you can do one of two things:
203 1. The sane thing. Just admit you screwed up, and use a different
205 name. Others have already seen one tag-name, and if you keep the
206 same name, you may be in the situation that two people both have
207 "version X", but they actually have different "X"'s. So just call
208 it "X.1" and be done with it.
209 2. The insane thing. You really want to call the new version "X" too,
211 even though others have already seen the old one. So just use git
212 tag -f again, as if you hadn’t already published the old one.
213 However, Git does not (and it should not) change tags behind users
215 back. So if somebody already got the old tag, doing a git pull on your
216 tree shouldn’t just make them overwrite the old one.
217 If somebody got a release tag from you, you cannot just change the tag
219 for them by updating your own one. This is a big security issue, in
220 that people MUST be able to trust their tag-names. If you really want
221 to do the insane thing, you need to just fess up to it, and tell people
222 that you messed up. You can do that by making a very public
223 announcement saying:
224 Ok, I messed up, and I pushed out an earlier version tagged as X. I
226 then fixed something, and retagged the *fixed* tree as X again.
227 If you got the wrong tag, and want the new one, please delete
229 the old one and fetch the new one by doing:
230 git tag -d X
232 git fetch origin tag X
233 to get my updated tag.
235 You can test which tag you have by doing
237 git rev-parse X
239 which should return 0123456789abcdef.. if you have the new version.
241 Sorry for the inconvenience.
243 Does this seem a bit complicated? It should be. There is no way that it
246 would be correct to just "fix" it automatically. People need to know
247 that their tags might have been changed.
248 On Automatic following
250 If you are following somebody else’s tree, you are most likely using
251 remote-tracking branches (eg. refs/remotes/origin/master). You usually
252 want the tags from the other end.
253 On the other hand, if you are fetching because you would want a
255 one-shot merge from somebody else, you typically do not want to get
256 tags from there. This happens more often for people near the toplevel
257 but not limited to them. Mere mortals when pulling from each other do
258 not necessarily want to automatically get private anchor point tags
259 from the other person.
260 Often, "please pull" messages on the mailing list just provide two
262 pieces of information: a repo URL and a branch name; this is designed
263 to be easily cut&pasted at the end of a git fetch command line:
264 Linus, please pull from
266 git://git..../proj.git master
268 to get the following updates...
270 becomes:
273 $ git pull git://git..../proj.git master
275 In such a case, you do not want to automatically follow the other
278 person’s tags.
279 One important aspect of Git is its distributed nature, which largely
281 means there is no inherent "upstream" or "downstream" in the system. On
282 the face of it, the above example might seem to indicate that the tag
283 namespace is owned by the upper echelon of people and that tags only
284 flow downwards, but that is not the case. It only shows that the usage
285 pattern determines who are interested in whose tags.
286 A one-shot pull is a sign that a commit history is now crossing the
288 boundary between one circle of people (e.g. "people who are primarily
289 interested in the networking part of the kernel") who may have their
290 own set of tags (e.g. "this is the third release candidate from the
291 networking group to be proposed for general consumption with 2.6.21
292 release") to another circle of people (e.g. "people who integrate
293 various subsystem improvements"). The latter are usually not interested
294 in the detailed tags used internally in the former group (that is what
295 "internal" means). That is why it is desirable not to follow tags
296 automatically in this case.
297 It may well be that among networking people, they may want to exchange
299 the tags internal to their group, but in that workflow they are most
300 likely tracking each other’s progress by having remote-tracking
301 branches. Again, the heuristic to automatically follow such tags is a
302 good thing.
303 On Backdating Tags
305 If you have imported some changes from another VCS and would like to
306 add tags for major releases of your work, it is useful to be able to
307 specify the date to embed inside of the tag object; such data in the
308 tag object affects, for example, the ordering of tags in the gitweb
309 interface.
310 To set the date used in future tag objects, set the environment
312 variable GIT_COMMITTER_DATE (see the later discussion of possible
313 values; the most common form is "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM").
314 For example:
316 $ GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="2006-10-02 10:31" git tag -s v1.0.1
318
321 The GIT_AUTHOR_DATE, GIT_COMMITTER_DATE environment variables support
322 the following date formats:
323 Git internal format
325 It is <unix timestamp> <time zone offset>, where <unix timestamp>
326 is the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch. <time zone offset>
327 is a positive or negative offset from UTC. For example CET (which
328 is 1 hour ahead of UTC) is +0100.
329 RFC 2822
331 The standard email format as described by RFC 2822, for example
332 Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:13:13 +0200.
333 ISO 8601
335 Time and date specified by the ISO 8601 standard, for example
336 2005-04-07T22:13:13. The parser accepts a space instead of the T
337 character as well.
338 Note
340 In addition, the date part is accepted in the following
341 formats: YYYY.MM.DD, MM/DD/YYYY and DD.MM.YYYY.
342
344 git-check-ref-format(1). git-config(1).
345
347 Part of the git(1) suite
348Git 2.18.1 05/14/2019 GIT-TAG(1)