Glossary
Git Tag
A Git tag is a named marker that points to a specific commit, most often used to label release points such as v2.4.0 in a repository's history.
A Git tag gives a permanent, human-readable name to a moment in a project's history. Unlike a branch, a tag does not move as new commits are added; it stays fixed on the commit it was created for, which makes it ideal for marking the exact code that shipped as a given version.
Release tags almost always follow semantic versioning, such as v2.4.0 or v3.0.0-rc.1, and serve as the boundaries that release tooling uses to decide what to summarize. To generate notes for a new version, a tool typically collects every commit and pull request between the previous tag and the new one.
There are two kinds of tags: lightweight tags, which are just a name pointing at a commit, and annotated tags, which store extra metadata like the tagger, date, and a message. Annotated tags are recommended for releases because they capture who cut the release and when, information that release notes and changelogs can build on.