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

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 <[email protected]> 1411478848 +0200
    
    msg
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
    
    <YOUR PGP SIGNATURE>
    -----END PGP SIGNAT
    

    And this is how it contains extra metadata. As we can see from the output, the metadata fields are:

    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?

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