Re: can I remove or move a tag in a remote repository?

[Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> 
> Perhaps I shouldn't push the cvs-head tag at all.

Possibly not, although it's nice to let others that use git to know 
where you've cut the release.

> A few questions:
>   - is there a way to say "push all tags matching /COREUTILS-*/"
>       or to say "push all tags, except the ones on this list"?


Here's a snippet from the default update hook we use on all our repos. 
We explicitly deny any non-annotated tags from being pushed to the 
central server and let rogue devs know why the push failed by writing 
the error message to stderr so that it gets sent over the wire. I 
believe this is still the default update-hook shipped with git.
---%<---%<----%<---
ref_type=$(git cat-file -t "$3")

# Only allow annotated tags in a shared repo
# Remove this code to treat dumb tags the same as everything else
case "$1","$ref_type" in
refs/tags/*,commit)
     echo "*** Un-annotated tags are not allowed in this repo" >&2
     echo "*** Use 'git tag [ -a | -s ]' for tags you want to 
propagate." >&2
     exit 1;;
---%<---%<---%<---

>   - is there a way to remove the cvs-head tag from the remote directory?
>       Note: I don't have shell access there.  I can request that someone
>       with shell access do it, but shouldn't have to resort to that.
>   - is there some way to make "git push" do what I want, and update the
>       offending tag in the remote repo?
> 

I'm not sure if execution reaches the update hook when you're uploading 
a tag that already exists. If it is, you could simply remove the 
offending tag in the update-hook and exit 0 to make it work properly. 
You can test this without shell-access on the remote system by setting 
up a repo on your local machine, making some dummy commit, cloning it 
and then hacking away on the hook while pushing to it from your local repo.

Other than that, push your tags manually by naming them explicitly on 
the push-line, like so:
$ git push $remote_repo $tag_name

This is what I do whenever we cut a release. With a one tag per release, 
it's not very troublesome at all, and the update-hook sends a nicely 
formatted message of the changes since the last release (last tag 
really, but it amounts to the same thing for us) to everyone involved.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se