Getting latest tag on git repository

get-latest-tag-on-git.sh

# The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit.
# If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is shown.
# Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of additional commits on top of the tagged object 
# and the abbreviated object name of the most recent commit.
git describe

# With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the closest tagname without any suffix:
git describe --abbrev=0

# other examples
git describe --abbrev=0 --tags # gets tag from current branch
git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1` # gets tags across all branches, not just the current branch

If the remote is GitHub and there's an associated release for the tag, why not just use the GitHub API?

$ tag="$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/box/box-java-sdk/releases/latest | jq -r '.tag_name')"
$ echo $tag
v4.0.1

Just deleted a stupid long ass comment. Just want to warn about git tag --sort=committerdate it does not work correctly with the tag command for whatever reason. But this does work.

git for-each-ref --sort=creatordate --format '%(refname) %(creatordate)' refs/tags

COMPLETELY different result that makes no sense to me git tag --sort=committerdate

However git tag --sort=taggerdate is basically what I always looked for, what should be the default output for git-tag IMG. I also hate how it paginates the output with lessor whatever by default.

Again, be warned about committerdate ! There is somebody above that had issue as well I think because of this. Even if my commit of things I tagged days or maybe even a week later. I makes absolutely no sense to me WTF this produces. Maybe my memory is just bad and it all makes sense, well probably actually. I think to much about this shit.

@eggbean I like that idea, but it hits an auth wall for private/enterprise repos

@arderyp There are a few different ways to authenticate. Have you tried the gh cli tool?

Thanks! :)

If the remote is GitHub and there's an associated release for the tag, why not just use the GitHub API?

$ tag="$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/box/box-java-sdk/releases/latest | jq -r '.tag_name')"
$ echo $tag
v4.0.1

@eggbean THANK YOU! This is the perfect solution!
All the other methods mentioned earlier were fetching the most recently created tag, NOT the latest release tag!

@fykaa No problem. I have a lot of GitHub Actions where I was using the GitHub API a lot to retrieve binaries. Maybe you will find them useful to look at as I was using regex to get the latest version.

https://github.com/eggbean/.dotfiles/tree/master/.github/workflows

@eggbean I like that idea, but it hits an auth wall for private/enterprise repos

@arderyp You can use the GitHub command to make an authenticated GitHub API request with gh api.

https://cli.github.com/