git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref

Question

I am cloning a single branch from a repository and creating a tag in a python script. The commands are as follows.

git clone -b master --single-branch <repository adress>

git tag -a testag -m 'test'

It clones successfully but when it comes to adding the tag, it breaks with the following error:

fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref.

# On branch master nothing to commit, working directory clean — Ahmad, Oct 01 '13 at 13:33
`cat .git/refs/heads/master` should return a sha1 of a commit. Can you check if that commit exists? — FlyingFoX, Oct 01 '13 at 17:26

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 02 '14 at 01:55

26

I ran into the same issue and was able to fix it by changing from

git tag -a testtag -m 'test'

to

git tag -a testtag -m "test"

I was running in Windows 7. Hope this helps :-)

answered Oct 02 '14 at 01:55

sebastianr

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1

Using Cmder on W10, this is what actually helped. – Jens Habegger Aug 03 '16 at 11:59

score 25 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 11 '17 at 09:10

25

I had the same issue. You have to commit first before tagging

git commit

because you put tags on commits. So when there is no commit (like in your situation), you can't create a tag.

edited Aug 11 '17 at 09:10

Melebius

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answered Jul 26 '15 at 19:03

Abdalla Mohamed Aly Ibrahim

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score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 15 '15 at 04:33

8

I also faced git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref issue when I was missing -m in the following command.(during tag creation)

git tag -a testtag 'test'

changing to

git tag -a testtag -m 'test'

fixed the issue

answered Dec 15 '15 at 04:33

Mukesh

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 07 '14 at 08:47

5

I had the same problem. I cloned from a bare repo and tried to use 'git tag' in that cloned repo, and that is where I was getting the error. To fix it I had to at least one push up to master before I could begin tagging. Hope this helps.

answered Oct 07 '14 at 08:47

arush436

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 19 '14 at 14:21

3

If you have access to the remote repository

cd /path/to/remote/repository
git config --bool core.bare true

answered Jan 19 '14 at 14:21

raffi

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What does that do precisely? – Francis Davey Jan 23 '14 at 17:56
According to this page http://bitflop.com/document/111 "A "bare" repository in Git just contains the version control information and no working files (no tree) and it doesn't contain the special .git sub-directory. Instead, it contains all the contents of the .git sub-directory directly in the main directory itself." – raffi Jul 31 '14 at 15:18

git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref

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