Do Git tags only apply to the current branch

Question

I m currently working with a repository that has multiple branches   When I create a tag  does that tag refer to the then-current branch   In other words  Whenever I create a tag  do I need to switch to the desired branch and tag inside that branch so that the tag refers to that branch at that point in time

User · Answer

When calling just git tag  lt TAGNAME gt  without any additional parameters  Git will create a new tag from your current HEAD  i e  the HEAD of your current branch   When adding additional commits into this branch  the branch HEAD will keep up with those new commits  while the tag always refers to the same commit   When calling git tag  lt TAGNAME gt   lt COMMIT gt  you can even specify which commit to use for creating the tag   Regardless  a tag is still simply a  pointer  to a certain commit  not a branch

User · Answer

We can create a tag for some past commit   git tag  tag name   reference of commit    eg   git tag v1 0 5fcdb03

User · Answer

If you create a tag by e g   git tag v1 0   the tag will refer to the most recent commit of the branch you are currently on  You can change branch and create a tag there   You can also just refer to the other branch while tagging   git tag v1 0 name of other branch   which will create the tag to the most recent commit of the other branch   Or you can just put the tag anywhere  no matter which branch  by directly referencing to the SHA1 of some commit  git tag v1 0  lt sha1 gt

User · Answer

Tags and branch are completely unrelated  since tags refer to a specific commit  and branch is a moving reference to the last commit of a history  Branches go  tags stay    So when you tag a commit  git doesn t care which commit or branch is checked out  if you provide him the SHA1 of what you want to tag   I can even tag by refering to a branch  it will then tag the tip of the branch   and later say that the branch s tip is elsewhere  with git reset --hard for example   or delete the branch  The tag I created however won t move

User · Answer

CharlesB s answer and helmbert s answer are both helpful  but it took me a while to understand them  Here s another way of putting it    A tag is a pointer to a commit  and commits exist independently of branches    It is important to understand that tags have no direct relationship with branches - they only ever identify a commit    That commit can be pointed to from any number of branches - i e   it can be part of the history of any number of branches - including none   Therefore  running git show  lt tag gt  to see a tag s details contains no reference to any branches  only the ID of the commit that the tag points to     Commit IDs  a k a  object names or SHA-1 IDs  are 40-character strings composed of hex  digits that are hashes over the contents of a commit  e g   6f6b5997506d48fc6267b0b60c3f0261b6afe7a2         Branches come into play only indirectly    At the time of creating a tag  by implying the commit that the tag will point to    Not specifying a target for a tag defaults to the current branch s most recent commit  a k a  HEAD   e g     git tag v0 1 0              tags HEAD of  current  branch  Specifying a branch name as the tag target defaults to that branch s most recent commit  e g     git tag v0 1 0  develop     tags HEAD of  develop  branch   As others have noted  you can also specify a commit ID explicitly as the tag s target    When using git describe to describe the current branch    git describe  --tags   describes the current branch in terms of the commits since the most recent  possibly lightweight  tag in this branch s history  Thus  the tag referenced by git describe may NOT reflect the most recently created tag overall

User · Answer

If you want to tag the branch you are in  then type   git tag  lt tag gt    and push the branch with   git push origin --tags

User · Answer

If you want to create a tag from a branch which is something like release yourbranch etc Then you should use something like  git tag YOUR TAG VERSION OR NAME origin release yourbranch   After creating proper tag if you wish to push the tag to remote then use the command  git push origin YOUR TAG VERSION OR NAME

[git] Do Git tags only apply to the current branch?

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