How to list all tags pointing to a specific commit in git

Question

I have seen the commands git describe and git-name-rev but I have not managed to get them to list more than one tag.

Example: I have the sha1 48eb354 and I know the tags A and B point to it. So I want a git command git {something} 48eb354 that produce output similar to "A, B". I am not interested in knowing references relative other tags or branches just exact matches for tags.

user2159398 · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12 04:40:50Z

259

git tag --points-at HEAD

Shows all tags at HEAD, you can also substitute HEAD with any sha1 id.

answered Mar 12, 2013 at 4:40

user2159398

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2 Comments

Andrew Johnson Over a year ago

Available from version 1.7.10: raw.github.com/gitster/git/master/Documentation/RelNotes/…

fourpastmidnight Over a year ago

This works for both lightweight and annotated tags. This should be marked as the correct answer, as it's short, simple, and works. I understand, however, that the accepted answer pre-dates git v1.7.10 where this functionality is added, so cudos to @max for his answer too! Upvoted!

yorammi · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-07 09:43:31Z

65

You can use:

git tag --contains <commit>

that shows all tags at certain commit. It can be used instead of:

git tag --points-at HEAD

that is available only from 1.7.10.

edited Nov 7, 2015 at 9:43

answered Nov 7, 2015 at 9:36

yorammi

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4 Comments

staafl Over a year ago

NB: 'git tag --contains' doesn't show only the tags that point to the commit, but also includes any later tags that it's reachable from.

Dejay Clayton Over a year ago

At least in version 2.6.4, this only returns a single tag that points to the specified commit. It doesn't not return them all. The answer above by @max seems to work properly for multiple tags.

SSilk Over a year ago

--contains also appears much slower than --points-at (7-8s execution time vs < 1s)

fourpastmidnight Over a year ago

@SSilk When I ran git tag --points-at HEAD, it was incredibly slow. Then subsequently running git tag --contains HEAD, it ran lightening fast. Given that's the exact opposite of what you experienced, perhaps there's some caching going on that makes "subsequent lookups" faster, but executing either command for the first time will be slow due to a "cache miss".

max · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-28 14:47:37Z

52

git show-ref --tags -d | grep ^48eb354 | sed -e 's,.* refs/tags/,,' -e 's/\^{}//'

should work for both lightweight and annotated tags.

edited Dec 28, 2010 at 14:47

answered Dec 28, 2010 at 14:40

max

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3 Comments

Dave Over a year ago

This works well for git < 1.7.10. Can you explain what that second part of the sed expression does? -e 's/\^{}//'

Dave Over a year ago

Ah, nevermind, figured it out. It's for the -d option on git show-ref. From the docs, "-d, --dereference Dereference tags into object IDs as well. They will be shown with "^{}" appended."

Christian Goetze Over a year ago

Slight enhancement/generalization for using arbitrary ${ref}, including annotated tags: hash=$(git rev-parse "${ref}^0"); git show-ref --tags -d | sed -n -e 's,^'"${hash}"' refs/tags/$.*$^{}$',\1,p'

Aristotle Pagaltzis · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-19 07:42:06Z

6

(Edit: This answer was written long before git tag had the --points-at switch – which is what you would use nowadays.)

git for-each-ref --format='%(objectname) %(refname:short)' refs/tags/ |
  grep ^$commit_id |
    cut -d' ' -f2

Pity it can’t be done more easily. Another flag on git tag to include commit IDs could express that git for-each-ref invocation naturally.

edited Sep 19, 2022 at 7:42

answered Dec 28, 2010 at 11:47

Aristotle Pagaltzis

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2 Comments

Zitrax Over a year ago

Thanks for the info but I seem not to be able to see the tags using this command either. Using the simpler "git for-each-ref | grep 48eb354" gives 0 matches. gitk on the other hand nicely lists the 2 tags in front of this commit.

darthn Over a year ago

This solution alone also works perfectly when the .git/objects folder is deleted! The solution i was looking for, to reduce the size of my docker build context. Thanks!

Progman · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-08 13:36:11Z

3

For current commit you can use

git tag --points-at $(git log -n1 --pretty='%H')

answered Oct 8, 2020 at 13:36

Progman

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1 Comment

qoomon Over a year ago

Just use HEAD instead of $(git log -n1 --pretty='%H')

Sylvain Defresne · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-28 14:03:09Z

1

The following command does the job, but directly parse the content of the .git directory and thus may break if the git repository format change.

grep -l -r -e '^48eb354' .git/refs/tags|sed -e 's,.*/,,'

answered Dec 28, 2010 at 14:03

Sylvain Defresne

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Zitrax Over a year ago

Does not list them either, the only place I see the sha1 if grepping the entire .git folder is in gitk.cache and logs/refs/remotes/origin/master. How come gitk can list them ? I also notice that the tags I am looking at are annotated tags, this might be why the two current answers are not working for me.

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