How to push tags to remote in Git
Łukasz Holeczek
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Pushing tags to remote repositories is essential for sharing version releases and ensuring all team members have access to the same tag references. With over 25 years of experience in version control and as the creator of CoreUI, I use tag pushing extensively for coordinating releases across development teams. The most important aspect is understanding that Git tags are not automatically pushed with regular commits and require explicit pushing. This ensures deliberate version management and prevents accidental tag sharing during development.
Use git push --tags or git push origin tagname to share tags with remote repositories and team members.
# Push all tags to remote
git push --tags
# Push a specific tag
git push origin v1.2.0
# Push specific tag to specific remote
git push upstream v1.2.0
# Push all tags and commits together
git push --follow-tags
The git push --tags command sends all local tags to the remote repository at once, while git push origin tagname pushes only a specific tag. The --follow-tags option pushes both commits and annotated tags that are reachable from the current commit, which is useful for release workflows. You can specify different remotes like upstream when working with forks.
Best Practice Note:
This tag sharing workflow is used in CoreUI’s release process to ensure consistent version distribution across all team members and repositories. Use --follow-tags in your release scripts to automatically include relevant tags with your pushes while maintaining control over which tags get shared.
