How to tell which commit a tag points to in Git

Question

I have a bunch of unannotated tags in the repository and I want to work out which commit they point to  Is there a command that that will just list the tags and their commit SHAs  Checking out the tag and looking at the HEAD seems a bit too laborious to me   Update  I realized after I went through the responses that what I actually wanted was to simply look at the history leading up to the tag  for which git log  lt tagname gt  is sufficient    The answer that is marked as answer is useful for getting a list of tags and their commits  which is what I asked  With a bit of shell hackery I m sure it s possible to transform those into SHA Commit message

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Even though this is pretty old  I thought I would point out a cool feature I just found for listing tags with commits   git log --decorate full   It will show the branches which end start at a commit  and the tags for commits

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From Igor Zevaka   Summary  Since there are about 4 almost equally acceptable yet different answers I will summarise all the different ways to skin a tag    git rev-list -1  TAG  answer   git rev-list outputs the commits that lead up to the  TAG similar to git log but only showing the SHA1 of the commit  The -1 limits the output to the commit it points at  git show-ref --tags  answer  will show all tags  local and fetched from remote  and their SHA1s  git show-ref  TAG  answer  will show the tag and its path along with the SHA1  git rev-parse  TAG  answer  will show the SHA1 of an unannotated tag  git rev-parse --verify  TAG  commit   answer  will show a SHA1 of both annotated and unannotated tags  On Windows use git rev-parse --verify  TAG      commit   four hats   cat  git refs tags   or cat  git packed-refs  answer  depending on whether or not the tag is local or fetched from remote

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git show-ref --tags   For example  git show-ref --abbrev 7 --tags will show you something like the following   f727215 refs tags v2 16 0 56072ac refs tags v2 17 0 b670805 refs tags v2 17 1 250ed01 refs tags v2 17 2

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So I have a load of release folders  where those folders may be checked out from one of a few different repos  and may be dev  qa or master branches or may be production releases  checked out from a tag  and the tag may be annotated or not   I have a script that will look at the target folder and get be back an answer in the form -   The problem is different versions of git return different status  for a tag checkout     So I found git show-ref --tags worked initially  except for the annotated tags   However adding -d added a separate entry to the list of tags  one for the tag  the other for the annotation  the annotation commit was identified as     which I stripped out with sed      So this is the core of my script  for anyone that wants it -  REPO  git --git-dir   TARGET  remote show origin -n              grep  Fetch URL                sed -E  s             1                sed  s  git       TAG  git --git-dir   TARGET  show-ref -d --tags              grep   git --git-dir   TARGET  show --quiet --format format  H HEAD                cut -d   -f2              cut -d  -f3              sed  s            if      TAG             then    BRANCH  git --git-dir   TARGET  show-ref --heads              grep   git --git-dir   TARGET  show --quiet --format format  H HEAD                cut -d   -f2              cut -d  -f3    TAG   BRANCH  fi

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Short post-Git-2 answer  I know this question has been out here for quite a while  And the answer from CB Bailey is 100  correct  git show-ref --tags --abbrev  I like this one better since it uses git tag   git tag --list --format    refname short    objectname short     Simple  Short   PS alias it as git taglist with this command   git config --global alias taglist  tag --list --format    refname short    objectname short

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Just use git show  lt tag gt   However  it also dumps commit diffs  To omit those diffs  use git log -1  lt tag gt    Thanks to  DolphinDream and  demisx

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How about this   git log -1  TAGNAME   OR   git log -1 origin  TAGNAME

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From git mailing list  here is the way to get the list of commit hashes for tags with automatic dereferencing for annotated tags   git for-each-ref --format    if    objectname   then    objectname   else   objectname   end    refname   refs tags

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I d also like to know the  right  way  but in the meantime  you can do this   git show mytag   head -1

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One way to do this would be with git rev-list  The following will output the commit to which a tag points    git rev-list -n 1  TAG  You could add it as an alias in    gitconfig if you use it a lot   alias    tagcommit   rev-list -n 1  And then call it with    git tagcommit  TAG  Possible pitfall  if you have a local checkout or a branch of the same tag name  this solution might get you  quot warning  refname  myTag  is ambiguous quot   In that case  try increasing specificity  e g     git rev-list -n 1 tags  TAG

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This will get you the current SHA1 hash   Abbreviated Commit Hash  git show  lt tag gt  --format   h  -- gt  42e646e   Commit Hash   git show  lt tag gt  --format   H  -- gt  42e646ea3483e156c58cf68925545fffaf4fb280

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In order to get the sha hash of the commit that a tag refers to  not the sha of the tag    git rev-list -1  lt tag gt

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Can use below  It will give the commit hash git show -s --format  H  lt tag gt   commit   If abbreviated commit hash required  git show -s --format  h  lt tag gt   commit

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On my repository  git show-ref TAG shows the tag s hash  not the hash of the commit it points to   git show-ref --dereference TAG shows  additionally  the commit being pointed at

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Use  git rev-parse --verify  lt tag gt   commit     which would return SHA-1 of a commit even for annotated tag      git show-ref  lt tag gt  would also work if  lt tag gt  is not annotated   And there is always git for-each-ref  see documentation for details

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If you would like to see the details of the tag SOMETAG  tagger  date  etc   the hash of the commit it points to and a bit of info about the commit but without the full diff  try  git show --name-status SOMETAG   Example output   tag SOMETAG Tagger       Date    Thu Jan 26 17 40 53 2017  0100        tag message          commit 9f00ce27c924c7e972e96be7392918b826a3fad9 Author                Date    Thu Jan 26 17 38 35 2017  0100        commit message                list of changed files with their change-status  like git log --name-status

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This doesn t show the filenames  but at least you get a feel of the repository   cat  git refs tags     Each file in that directory contains a commit SHA pointing to a commit

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You could as well get more easy-to-interpret picture of where tags point to using  git log --graph  git name-rev --stdin --tags  less   and then scroll to the tag you re looking for via     More compact view  --pretty oneline  plus all heads  -a  could also help   git log -a --pretty oneline --graph  git name-rev --stdin --tags  less   Looks a bit terrifying  but could also be aliased in    gitconfig if necessary      gitconfig   alias  ls-tags    git log -a --pretty oneline --graph  git name-rev --stdin --tags  less

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i d also like to know the right way  but you can always peek either into     cat  git packed-refs    or     cat  git refs tags

[git] How to tell which commit a tag points to in Git?

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