How can you configure git to automatically fetch the tags on every pull?

Question

This may or may not be a very dumb idea, but how can you configure a git repository such that any pull that is done automatically fetches the tags from the other repository as well?

According to the docs, it looks like you can do this on a per remote reposistory basis:

remote.<name>.tagopt
Setting this value to --no-tags disables automatic tag following when fetching from remote <name>. Setting it to --tags will fetch every tag from remote <name>, even if they are not reachable from remote branch heads. Passing these flags directly to git-fetch(1) can override this setting. See options --tags and --no-tags of git-fetch(1).

Is there way to make --tags the default flag to fetch for every fetch?

Answer 1

Fetching tags has a different effect than fetching commits (git fetch), as explained in "Does “git fetch --tags” include “git fetch”?".

The latter will update branch heads, and will actually fetch tags reachable from those updated branches.
The former will fetch all tags, but won't update the branch heads.

So if your tags are reacheable from the branches you are fetching, you don't have to include --tags by default.

Considering the large history of some repos (including the linux one), always wanting to fetch all tags might lead to tag list cluttering (a list of tag pollutted by hundreds of not-needed tags).

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Note that starting git 1.9/2.0 (Q1 2014), git fetch --tags will fetch everything (like git fetch), plus the tags. See "Does “git fetch --tags” include “git fetch”?".

Request that all tags be fetched from the remote in addition to whatever else is being fetched.

So you can try the remote.<name>.tagOpt config option:

git config (--global) remote.<name>.tagOpt --tags

Setting it to --tags will fetch every tag from remote <name>, even if they are not reachable from remote branch heads.