git-tag
(1)
Name
git-tag - Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed
with GPG
Synopsis
git tag [-a | -s | -u <key-id>] [-f] [-m <msg> | -F <file>]
<tagname> [<commit> | <object>]
git tag -d <tagname>...
git tag [-n[<num>]] -l [--contains <commit>] [<pattern>...]
git tag -v <tagname>...
Description
Git Manual GIT-TAG(1)
NAME
git-tag - Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed
with GPG
SYNOPSIS
git tag [-a | -s | -u <key-id>] [-f] [-m <msg> | -F <file>]
<tagname> [<commit> | <object>]
git tag -d <tagname>...
git tag [-n[<num>]] -l [--contains <commit>] [<pattern>...]
git tag -v <tagname>...
DESCRIPTION
Add a tag reference in .git/refs/tags/, unless -d/-l/-v is
given to delete, list or verify tags.
Unless -f is given, the tag to be created must not yet exist
in the .git/refs/tags/ directory.
If one of -a, -s, or -u <key-id> is passed, the command
creates a tag object, and requires a tag message. Unless -m
<msg> or -F <file> is given, an editor is started for the
user to type in the tag message.
If -m <msg> or -F <file> is given and -a, -s, and -u
<key-id> are absent, -a is implied.
Otherwise just a tag reference for the SHA1 object name of
the commit object is created (i.e. a lightweight tag).
A GnuPG signed tag object will be created when -s or -u
<key-id> is used. When -u <key-id> is not used, the
committer identity for the current user is used to find the
GnuPG key for signing. The configuration variable
gpg.program is used to specify custom GnuPG binary.
OPTIONS
-a, --annotate
Make an unsigned, annotated tag object
-s, --sign
Make a GPG-signed tag, using the default e-mail
address's key.
-u <key-id>, --local-user=<key-id>
Make a GPG-signed tag, using the given key.
-f, --force
Replace an existing tag with the given name (instead of
failing)
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-d, --delete
Delete existing tags with the given names.
-v, --verify
Verify the gpg signature of the given tag names.
-n<num>
<num> specifies how many lines from the annotation, if
any, are printed when using -l. The default is not to
print any annotation lines. If no number is given to -n,
only the first line is printed. If the tag is not
annotated, the commit message is displayed instead.
-l <pattern>, --list <pattern>
List tags with names that match the given pattern (or
all if no pattern is given). Running "git tag" without
arguments also lists all tags. The pattern is a shell
wildcard (i.e., matched using fnmatch(3)). Multiple
patterns may be given; if any of them matches, the tag
is shown.
--contains <commit>
Only list tags which contain the specified commit.
-m <msg>, --message=<msg>
Use the given tag message (instead of prompting). If
multiple -m options are given, their values are
concatenated as separate paragraphs. Implies -a if none
of -a, -s, or -u <key-id> is given.
-F <file>, --file=<file>
Take the tag message from the given file. Use - to read
the message from the standard input. Implies -a if none
of -a, -s, or -u <key-id> is given.
--cleanup=<mode>
This option sets how the tag message is cleaned up. The
<mode> can be one of verbatim, whitespace and strip. The
strip mode is default. The verbatim mode does not change
message at all, whitespace removes just leading/trailing
whitespace lines and strip removes both whitespace and
commentary.
<tagname>
The name of the tag to create, delete, or describe. The
new tag name must pass all checks defined by git-check-
ref-format(1). Some of these checks may restrict the
characters allowed in a tag name.
CONFIGURATION
By default, git tag in sign-with-default mode (-s) will use
your committer identity (of the form "Your Name
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<your@email.address[1]>") to find a key. If you want to use
a different default key, you can specify it in the
repository configuration as follows:
[user]
signingkey = <gpg-key-id>
DISCUSSION
On Re-tagging
What should you do when you tag a wrong commit and you would
want to re-tag?
If you never pushed anything out, just re-tag it. Use "-f"
to replace the old one. And you're done.
But if you have pushed things out (or others could just read
your repository directly), then others will have already
seen the old tag. In that case you can do one of two things:
1. The sane thing. Just admit you screwed up, and use a
different name. Others have already seen one tag-name,
and if you keep the same name, you may be in the
situation that two people both have "version X", but
they actually have different "X"'s. So just call it
"X.1" and be done with it.
2. The insane thing. You really want to call the new
version "X" too, even though others have already seen
the old one. So just use git tag -f again, as if you
hadn't already published the old one.
However, Git does not (and it should not) change tags behind
users back. So if somebody already got the old tag, doing a
git pull on your tree shouldn't just make them overwrite the
old one.
If somebody got a release tag from you, you cannot just
change the tag for them by updating your own one. This is a
big security issue, in that people MUST be able to trust
their tag-names. If you really want to do the insane thing,
you need to just fess up to it, and tell people that you
messed up. You can do that by making a very public
announcement saying:
Ok, I messed up, and I pushed out an earlier version tagged as X. I
then fixed something, and retagged the *fixed* tree as X again.
If you got the wrong tag, and want the new one, please delete
the old one and fetch the new one by doing:
git tag -d X
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git fetch origin tag X
to get my updated tag.
You can test which tag you have by doing
git rev-parse X
which should return 0123456789abcdef.. if you have the new version.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Does this seem a bit complicated? It should be. There is no
way that it would be correct to just "fix" it automatically.
People need to know that their tags might have been changed.
On Automatic following
If you are following somebody else's tree, you are most
likely using remote-tracking branches (refs/heads/origin in
traditional layout, or refs/remotes/origin/master in the
separate-remote layout). You usually want the tags from the
other end.
On the other hand, if you are fetching because you would
want a one-shot merge from somebody else, you typically do
not want to get tags from there. This happens more often for
people near the toplevel but not limited to them. Mere
mortals when pulling from each other do not necessarily want
to automatically get private anchor point tags from the
other person.
Often, "please pull" messages on the mailing list just
provide two pieces of information: a repo URL and a branch
name; this is designed to be easily cut&pasted at the end of
a git fetch command line:
Linus, please pull from
git://git..../proj.git master
to get the following updates...
becomes:
$ git pull git://git..../proj.git master
In such a case, you do not want to automatically follow the
other person's tags.
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One important aspect of git is its distributed nature, which
largely means there is no inherent "upstream" or
"downstream" in the system. On the face of it, the above
example might seem to indicate that the tag namespace is
owned by the upper echelon of people and that tags only flow
downwards, but that is not the case. It only shows that the
usage pattern determines who are interested in whose tags.
A one-shot pull is a sign that a commit history is now
crossing the boundary between one circle of people (e.g.
"people who are primarily interested in the networking part
of the kernel") who may have their own set of tags (e.g.
"this is the third release candidate from the networking
group to be proposed for general consumption with 2.6.21
release") to another circle of people (e.g. "people who
integrate various subsystem improvements"). The latter are
usually not interested in the detailed tags used internally
in the former group (that is what "internal" means). That is
why it is desirable not to follow tags automatically in this
case.
It may well be that among networking people, they may want
to exchange the tags internal to their group, but in that
workflow they are most likely tracking each other's progress
by having remote-tracking branches. Again, the heuristic to
automatically follow such tags is a good thing.
On Backdating Tags
If you have imported some changes from another VCS and would
like to add tags for major releases of your work, it is
useful to be able to specify the date to embed inside of the
tag object; such data in the tag object affects, for
example, the ordering of tags in the gitweb interface.
To set the date used in future tag objects, set the
environment variable GIT_COMMITTER_DATE (see the later
discussion of possible values; the most common form is
"YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM").
For example:
$ GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="2006-10-02 10:31" git tag -s v1.0.1
DATE FORMATS
The GIT_AUTHOR_DATE, GIT_COMMITTER_DATE environment
variables support the following date formats:
Git internal format
It is <unix timestamp> <timezone offset>, where <unix
timestamp> is the number of seconds since the UNIX
epoch. <timezone offset> is a positive or negative
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offset from UTC. For example CET (which is 2 hours ahead
UTC) is +0200.
RFC 2822
The standard email format as described by RFC 2822, for
example Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:13:13 +0200.
ISO 8601
Time and date specified by the ISO 8601 standard, for
example 2005-04-07T22:13:13. The parser accepts a space
instead of the T character as well.
Note
In addition, the date part is accepted in the
following formats: YYYY.MM.DD, MM/DD/YYYY and
DD.MM.YYYY.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Availability | developer/versioning/git |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------------+
SEE ALSO
git-check-ref-format(1).
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
NOTES
1. your@email.address
mailto:your@email.address
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://git-
core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.9.2.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://git-scm.com/.
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