How do you rename a Git tag

Question

Today I was looking through the logs for a project and realized that I fat fingered a tag name some time ago  Is there some way to rename the tag  Google hasn t turned up anything useful   I realize I could check out the tagged version and make a new tag  I even tried that  But that seems to create a tag object that isn t quite right  For one   git tag -l   lists it out of order relative to all of the other tags  I have no idea if that s significant  but it leads me to believe that the new tag object isn t quite what I want  I can live with that  because I really only care that the tag name matches the documentation  but I d rather do it  right   assuming there is a right way to do this

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As an add on to the other answers  I added an alias to do it all in one step  with a more familiar  nix move command feel  Argument 1 is the old tag name  argument 2 is the new tag name    alias      renameTag     sh -c  set -e git tag  2  1  git tag -d  1 git push origin  refs tags  1 git push --tags  -    Usage   git renametag old new

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If it s published  you can t delete it  without risking being tarred and feathered  that is   The  Git way  is to do   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  quot version X quot   but they actually have different  quot X quot  s  So just call it  quot X 1 quot  and be done with it   Alternatively   The insane thing  You really want to call the new version  quot X quot  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   It s so insane because   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   All courtesy of the man pages

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You can also rename remote tags without checking them out  by duplicate the old tag branch to a new name and delete the old one  in a single git push command   Remote tag rename   Remote branch   tag conversion   Notice   refs tags    git push  lt remote name gt   lt old branch or tag gt  refs tags  lt new tag gt    lt old branch or tag gt    Remote branch rename   Remote tag   branch conversion   Notice   refs heads    git push  lt remote name gt   lt old branch or tag gt  refs heads  lt new branch gt    lt old branch or tag gt    Output renaming a remote tag   D  git repo gt git push gitlab App 2012 1 20v12 1 0 23 refs tags App 12 1 v12 1 0 23  App 2012 1 20v12 1 0 23  Total 0  delta 0   reused 0  delta 0  To https   gitlab server project repository git  -  deleted                App 2012 1 20v12 1 0 23     new tag                App 2012 1 20v12 1 0 23 - gt  App 12 1 v12 1 0 23

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For the adventurous it can be done in one command   mv  git refs tags OLD  git refs tags NEW

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Follow the 3 step approach for a one or a few number of tags  Step 1  Identify the commit object ID of the commit the current tag is pointing to command  git rev-parse  lt tag name gt  example  git rev-parse v0 1 0-Demo example output  db57b63b77a6bae3e725cbb9025d65fa1eabcde  Step 2  Delete the tag from the repository command  git tag -d  lt tag name gt  example  git tag -d v0 1 0-Demo example output  Deleted tag  v0 1 0-Demo   was abcde   Step 3  Create a new tag pointing to the same commit id as the old tag was pointing to command  git tag -a  lt tag name gt   -m  quot appropriate message quot   lt commit id gt  example  git tag -a v0 1 0-full  -m  quot renamed from v0 1 0-Demo quot  db57b63b77a6bae3e725cbb9025d65fa1eabcde example output  Nothing or basically  lt No error gt   Once the local git is ready with the tag name change  these changes can be pushed back to the origin for others to take these  command  git push origin   lt old tag name gt   lt new tag name gt  example  git push origin  v0 1 0-Demo v0 1 0-full example output   lt deleted  amp  new tags gt

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The original question was how to rename a tag  which is easy  first create NEW as an alias of OLD  git tag NEW OLD then delete OLD  git tag -d OLD   The quote regarding  the Git way  and  in sanity is off base  because it s talking about preserving a tag name  but making it refer to a different repository state

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This wiki page has this interesting one-liner  which reminds us that we can push several refs  git push origin refs tags  lt old-tag gt  refs tags  lt new-tag gt   refs tags  lt old-tag gt   amp  amp  git tag -d  lt old-tag gt    and ask other cloners to do git pull --prune --tags  So the idea is to push    lt new-tag gt  for every commits referenced by  lt old-tag gt   refs tags  lt old-tag gt  refs tags  lt new-tag gt   the deletion of  lt old-tag gt    refs tags  lt old-tag gt   See as an example  quot Change naming convention of tags inside a git repository  quot

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Here is how I rename a tag old to new  git tag new old git tag -d old git push origin new  old  The colon in the push command removes the tag from the remote repository  If you don t do this  Git will create the old tag on your machine when you pull  Finally  make sure that the other users remove the deleted tag  Please tell them  co-workers  to run the following command  git pull --prune --tags  Note that if you are changing an annotated tag  you need ensure that the new tag name is referencing the underlying commit and not the old annotated tag object that you re about to delete  Therefore  use git tag -a new old    instead of git tag new old  this is because annotated tags are objects while lightweight tags are not  more info in this answer

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Regardless of the issues dealing with pushing tags and renaming tags that have already been pushed  in case the tag to rename is an annotated one  you could first copy it thanks to the following single-line command line   git tag -a -m   git cat-file -p old tag   tail -n  6   new tag old tag      Then  you just need to delete the old tag   git tag -d old tag   I found this command line thanks to the following two answers    https   stackoverflow com a 26132640 7009806  second comment  https   stackoverflow com a 49286861 7009806   Edit  Having encountered problems using automatic synchronisation of tags setting fetch pruneTags true  as described in https   stackoverflow com a 49215190 7009806   I personally suggest to first copy the new tag on the server and then delete the old one  That way  the new tag does not get randomly deleted when deleting the old tag and a synchronisation of the tags would like to delete the new tag that is not yet on the server  So  for instance  all together we get   git tag -a -m   git cat-file -p old tag   tail -n  6   new tag old tag    git push --tags git tag -d old tag git push origin  refs tags old tag

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In addition to the other answers   First you need to build an alias of the old tag name  pointing to the original commit   git tag new old      Then you need to delete the old one locally   git tag -d old   Then delete the tag on you remote location s      Check your remote sources  git remote -v   The argument  3rd  is your remote location    the one you can see with  git remote   In this example   origin  git push origin  refs tags old   Finally you need to add your new tag to the remote location  Until you have done this  the new tag s  will not be added   git push origin --tags   Iterate this for every remote location   Be aware  of the implications that a Git Tag change has to consumers of a package

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This answer solves the problem by creating a duplicate annotated tag     including all tag info such as tagger  message  and tag date     by using the tag info from the existing tag  SOURCE TAG old NEW TAG new  deref     git for-each-ref    quot refs tags  SOURCE TAG quot  --format  quot    1  quot         GIT COMMITTER NAME  quot   deref taggername  quot    GIT COMMITTER EMAIL  quot   deref taggeremail  quot    GIT COMMITTER DATE  quot   deref taggerdate  quot  git tag  quot  NEW TAG quot     quot   deref  quot  objectname quot   quot  -a -m  quot   deref contents  quot   git tag -d old  git push origin new  old  Update the SOURCE TAG and NEW TAG values to match your old and new tag names  Motivation From what I can tell  all the other answers have subtle gotchas  or don t fully duplicate everything about the tag  e g  they use a new tag date  or the current user s info as the tagger    Many of them  call out the re-tagging warning  despite that not applying to this scenario  it s for moving a tag name to a different commit  not for renaming to a differently named tag    I ve done some digging  and I believe I ve pieced together a solution that addresses these concerns  Goal The git-tag documentation specifies the parts of an annotated tag   To truly be an indistinguishable rename  these elements should be the same in the new tag   Tag objects  created with -a  -s  or -u  are called  quot annotated quot  tags  they contain a creation date  the tagger name and e-mail  a tagging message  and an optional GnuPG signature   I m only addressing unsigned tags in this answer  though it should be a simple matter to extend this solution to signed tags  Procedure An annotated tag named old is used in the example  and will be renamed to new  Step 1  Get existing tag information First  we need to get the information for the existing tag   This can be achieved using for-each-ref  Command  git for-each-ref refs tags --format  quot   Tag name    refname short  Tag commit    objectname short  Tagger date    taggerdate  Tagger name    taggername  Tagger email    taggeremail  Tagged commit     objectname short  Tag message    contents  quot   Output  Tag commit  88a6169 Tagger date  Mon Dec 14 12 44 52 2020 -0600 Tagger name  John Doe Tagger email   lt j doe example com gt  Tagged commit  cda5b4d Tag name  old Tag message  Initial tag  Body line 1  Body line 2  Body line 3   Step 2  Create a duplicate tag locally A duplicate tag with the new name can be created using the info gathered in step 1 from the existing tag  The commit ID  amp  commit message can be passed directly to git tag  The tagger information  name  email  and date  can be set using the git environment variables GIT COMMITTER NAME  GIT COMMITTER EMAIL  GIT COMMITTER DATE   The date usage in this context is described in the On Backdating Tags documentation for git tag  the other two I figured out through experimentation  GIT COMMITTER NAME  quot John Doe quot  GIT COMMITTER EMAIL  quot j doe example com quot    GIT COMMITTER DATE  quot Mon Dec 14 12 44 52 2020 -0600 quot  git tag new cda5b4d -a -m  quot Initial tag  Body line 1  Body line 2  Body line 3  quot   A side-by-side comparison of the two tags shows they re identical in all the ways that matter   The only thing that s differing here is the commit reference of the tag itself  which is expected since they re two different tags  Command  git for-each-ref refs tags --format  quot   Tag commit    objectname short  Tagger date    taggerdate  Tagger name    taggername  Tagger email    taggeremail  Tagged commit     objectname short  Tag name    refname short  Tag message    contents  quot   Output  Tag commit  580f817 Tagger date  Mon Dec 14 12 44 52 2020 -0600 Tagger name  John Doe Tagger email   lt j doe example com gt  Tagged commit  cda5b4d Tag name  new Tag message  Initial tag  Body line 1  Body line 2  Body line 3   Tag commit  30ddd25 Tagger date  Mon Dec 14 12 44 52 2020 -0600 Tagger name  John Doe Tagger email   lt j doe example com gt  Tagged commit  cda5b4d Tag name  old Tag message  Initial tag  Body line 1  Body line 2  Body line 3   As a single command  including retrieving the current tag data  SOURCE TAG old NEW TAG new  deref     git for-each-ref  quot refs tags  SOURCE TAG quot  --format  quot    1  quot       GIT COMMITTER NAME  quot   deref taggername  quot  GIT COMMITTER EMAIL  quot   deref taggeremail  quot  GIT COMMITTER DATE  quot   deref taggerdate  quot  git tag  quot  NEW TAG quot   quot   deref  quot  objectname quot   quot  -a -m  quot   deref contents  quot   Step 3  Delete the existing tag locally Next  the existing tag should be deleted locally   This step can be skipped if you wish to keep the old tag along with the new one  i e  duplicate the tag rather than rename it   git tag -d old  Step 4  Push changes to remote repository Assuming you re working from a remote repository  the changes can now be pushed using git push  git push origin new  old  This pushes the new tag  and deletes the old tag

[git] How do you rename a Git tag?

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