How to tell which commit a tag points to in Git?

Solution 1:

One way to do this would be with git rev-list. The following will output the commit to which a tag points:

$ git rev-list -n 1 $TAG

NOTE This works for both Annotated and Unannotated tags

You could add it as an alias in ~/.gitconfig if you use it a lot:

[alias]
  tagcommit = rev-list -n 1

And then call it with:

$ git tagcommit $TAG

Possible pitfall: if you have a local checkout or a branch of the same tag name, this solution might get you "warning: refname 'myTag' is ambiguous". In that case, try increasing specificity, e.g.:

$ git rev-list -n 1 tags/$TAG

Solution 2:

WARNING This only works for Unannotated tags Therefore it is safer to use the accepted answer which works in the general case https://stackoverflow.com/a/1862542/1586965

git show-ref --tags

For example, git show-ref --abbrev=7 --tags will show you something like the following:

f727215 refs/tags/v2.16.0
56072ac refs/tags/v2.17.0
b670805 refs/tags/v2.17.1
250ed01 refs/tags/v2.17.2

Solution 3:

Just use git show <tag>

However, it also dumps commit diffs. To omit those diffs, use git log -1 <tag>. (Thanks to @DolphinDream and @demisx !)

Solution 4:

From Igor Zevaka:

Summary

Since there are about 4 almost equally acceptable yet different answers I will summarise all the different ways to skin a tag.

git rev-list -1 $TAG (answer). git rev-list outputs the commits that lead up to the $TAG similar to git log but only showing the SHA1 of the commit. The -1 limits the output to the commit it points at.
git show-ref --tags (answer) will show all tags (local and fetched from remote) and their SHA1s.
git show-ref $TAG (answer) will show the tag and its path along with the SHA1.
git rev-parse $TAG (answer) will show the SHA1 of an unannotated tag.
git rev-parse --verify $TAG^{commit} (answer) will show a SHA1 of both annotated and unannotated tags. On Windows use git rev-parse --verify %TAG%^^^^{commit} (four hats).
cat .git/refs/tags/* or cat .git/packed-refs (answer) depending on whether or not the tag is local or fetched from remote.