Re: changing git tags on the remote repo

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 01:12:40PM +0200, Holger Wansing wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am curious about how to change an already existing git tag afterwards
> (means: change the commit it points to).
> 
> Locally, I can change an existing tag, and then create it newly.
> But I cannot push it to the remote repo (get
> 	"! [rejected]        139 -> 139 (already exists) "
> 
> There is -f (--force) option to replace an existing tag and locally it seems
> to work, since it says 
> 	"Tag '139' updated (was 02108ec)"
> but the push to remote repo fails nevertheless.
> 
> 
> Any help?
> 
> Holger

Delete the old one first, then recreate it:

git push origin :139
git push origin 139

This is because tags are not meant to be updated, only to be added to --
other than branches, tags are meant as final,
create-once-and-never-update style, names. As such, even if you replace
a tag remotely, anyone who has already fetched it would need to
explicitly drop the tag locally and recreate it; git does not
auto-update tags that changed remotely.

In that light, it is probably better to just skip the 139 tag and move
on to 140.

-- 
Could you people please use IRC like normal people?!?

  -- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, trying to quiet down the buzz in the DebConf 2008
     Hacklab