Sort git tags by semver

README.md

If you're like me and you use semver for versioning your tags, you probably hate when you do this:

$ git tag -l
0.1.0
0.10.0
0.2.0
0.3.0
0.3.1
0.4.0
0.5.0
0.6.0
0.7.0
0.7.1
0.7.2
0.8.0
0.8.1
0.8.2
0.8.3
0.8.4
0.8.5
0.8.6
0.9.0

because the 0.10.0 tag is hiding way up near the top and you might not even see it.

Here's the solution, create a file on your $PATH (maybe in your ~/bin dir) called git-tag-sort with the contents of the file below, and you should be able to do this:

$ git tag-sort 
0.1.0
0.2.0
0.3.0
0.3.1
0.4.0
0.5.0
0.6.0
0.7.0
0.7.1
0.7.2
0.8.0
0.8.1
0.8.2
0.8.3
0.8.4
0.8.5
0.8.6
0.9.0
0.10.0

Have fun!

git-tag-sort

#!/bin/bash

git tag --sort=v:refname

This won't work in Git for Windows. Do this instead: git tag | sort -t "." -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n. This will set the dot as a column separator, then do a numeric sort on the first column, then the second column, then the third column.

This is the only valid answer. Everything else breaks down when anything over major+minor+patch is used.

I take that back. Doing that is completely broken in hard to explain ways in some cases… Example:

git tag | sort -t "." -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n
…
v0.12.0-rc2
v2.12.0
v2.12.0-rc0
v2.12.0-rc1
v2.12.0-rc2
v2.12.0-rc3
v2.12.0-rc4
v0.12.1
v2.12.1
v0.12.2
v0.12.3
…

🤷🏻‍♂️

The thing that finally worked for me was using Debian-inspired ~ instead of - for the time of sorting:

git tag | tr - \~ | sort -V | tr \~ -

git tag | sort -t "." -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n

Thanks this worked.

git tag | tr - \~ | sort -V | tr \~ -

I cannot believe after trying to figure this out I finally saw that line and it blew my mind.

git tag | tr - \~ | sort -V | tr \~ -

Only this 👆 works correct.

0.0.1
0.0.2-develop
0.0.2

👏 Thanks!