Can I create "releases" in git like I can when using github?

Question

Both when using git ( and when I say this I mean a git repository that I host ) and when using github (which I also use for different projects ) I know that I can create tags ( which I tend to think of as releases / snapshots of a branch at a moment in time, that cannot be changed ).

However I noticed recently that on github I can now create "releases". These appear to consist of a tag and then some labelling (maybe this is just syntactic sugar or maybe its a much more complex beast ).

As an example if I created a tag on git or github via the command line using the following:

git tag -a 2.1 -m "Fixed AI problems in Skynet" master
git push --tags

Then this does indeed create a tag but not a "release" (obviously). In the github GUI I can then turn this into a "release" with a few clicks.

However I cannot seem to find a way to do this in regular git ( i.e. the git repo I host ).

Is it possible to create "releases" in git or should I just be happy with tags ? and as a further sub question: is the release concept in github that builds upon tags just something they came up with to make the tagging process more slick ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Releases in github are just tags with some attached binary assets (and a lot of nice UI features). See the github blog for an exact description.

Creating tags is a very appropriate way to mark a release in a git repository.

Answer 2

Is it possible to create "releases" in git or should I just be happy with tags

A Release is a GitHub concept. It cannot be created through a git command line. However, it's built on top of the git tag concept.

Basically, a Release is made of

• A git tag
• A release note
• Some downloadable artifacts

More information about this topic:

• GitHub Blog post announcement
• GitHub Help topic
• Related StackOverflow question that elaborates a bit further on the gory details of tagging.