What is the difference between an annotated and unannotated tag

Question

If I want to tag the current commit  I know both of the following command lines work   git tag  lt tagname gt    and  git tag -a  lt tagname gt  -m   lt message gt     What is the difference between these commands

User · Answer

The big difference is perfectly explained here   Basically  lightweight tags are just pointers to specific commits  No further information is saved  on the other hand  annotated tags are regular objects  which have an author and a date and can be referred because they have their own SHA key   If knowing who tagged what and when is relevant for you  then use annotated tags  If you just want to tag a specific point in your development  no matter who and when did that  then lightweight tags are good enough   Normally you d go for annotated tags  but it is really up to the Git master of the project

User · Answer

Push annotated tags  keep lightweight local  man git-tag says      Annotated tags are meant for release while lightweight tags are meant for private or temporary object labels    And certain behaviors do differentiate between them in ways that this recommendation is useful e g     annotated tags can contain a message  creator  and date different than the commit they point to  So you could use them to describe a release without making a release commit   Lightweight tags don t have that extra information  and don t need it  since you are only going to use it yourself to develop  git push --follow-tags will only push annotated tags git describe without command line options only sees annotated tags   Internals differences   both lightweight and annotated tags are a file under  git refs tags that contains a SHA-1 for lightweight tags  the SHA-1 points directly to a commit   git tag light cat  git refs tags light   prints the same as the HEAD s SHA-1   So no wonder they cannot contain any other metadata  annotated tags point to a tag object in the object database   git tag -as -m msg annot cat  git refs tags annot   contains the SHA of the annotated tag object   c1d7720e99f9dd1d1c8aee625fd6ce09b3a81fef   and then we can get its content with   git cat-file -p c1d7720e99f9dd1d1c8aee625fd6ce09b3a81fef   sample output   object 4284c41353e51a07e4ed4192ad2e9eaada9c059f type commit tag annot tagger Ciro Santilli  lt your mail com gt  1411478848  0200  msg -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version  GnuPG v1 4 11  GNU Linux    lt YOUR PGP SIGNATURE gt  -----END PGP SIGNAT   And this is how it contains extra metadata  As we can see from the output  the metadata fields are    the object it points to the type of object it points to  Yes  tag objects can point to any other type of object like blobs  not just commits  the name of the tag tagger identity and timestamp message  Note how the PGP signature is just appended to the message   A more detailed analysis of the format is present at  What is the format of a git tag object and how to calculate its SHA    Bonuses   Determine if a tag is annotated   git cat-file -t tag   Outputs   commit for lightweight  since there is no tag object  it points directly to the commit tag for annotated  since there is a tag object in that case  List only lightweight tags  How can I list all lightweight tags

User · Answer

TL DR  The difference between the commands is that one provides you with a tag message while the other doesn t  An annotated tag has a message that can be displayed with git-show 1   while a tag without annotations is just a named pointer to a commit   More About Lightweight Tags  According to the documentation   To create a lightweight tag  don   t supply any of the -a  -s  or -m options  just provide a tag name   There are also some different options to write a message on annotated tags    When you use git tag  lt tagname gt   Git will create a tag at the current revision but will not prompt you for an annotation  It will be tagged without a message  this is a lightweight tag   When you use git tag -a  lt tagname gt   Git will prompt you for an annotation unless you have also used the -m flag to provide a message  When you use git tag -a -m  lt msg gt   lt tagname gt   Git will tag the commit and annotate it with the provided message  When you use git tag -m  lt msg gt   lt tagname gt   Git will behave as if you passed the -a flag for annotation and use the provided message    Basically  it just amounts to whether you want the tag to have an annotation and some other information associated with it or not

[git] What is the difference between an annotated and unannotated tag?

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