git tag
Mark an important point in your repository history
The git tag
command is very useful for marking an important point in your repository's history. The most common use-case for this command is to mark a version or release point in your code.
Creating a new tag and commit
You would type the following in your terminal to use this command:
$ git tag -a v1.1 -m "Version 1.1"
This would be used instead of git commit -m "Version 1.1"
and create a new commit and assign the tag v1.1
to it at the same time.
Tagging an old commit
If you want to assign a tag to a past commit, you can do so using this command:
$ git tag -a "v1.0" 1234abc
Where 1234abc
is your previous commit reference.
Searching and using tags
You can view a list of previously added tags using the following command:
$ git tag
v1.1
v1.0
You'll see a full list of previous tags in the repository. If you have a large number of tags, you can even use a simple wildcard such as:
$ git tag -l "v1*"
v1.1
v1.0
To view all tags starting with v1
.
You can then use any tag that exists in git operations, in exactly the same way that you might use a commit reference, such as git checkout
or git show
.