How do I search the content of tag annotations in git?

Question

I am about to release the first version of my first git-managed project and am going to tag it with an annotated tag ("first alpha release"). Later on, to find out which was the first alpha release, I would like to search the contents of the tag annotations for "first alpha". How do I do so?

I know git log --grep will search the contents of commit messages and git show will tell me the contents of a tag annotation, but I can't figure out from the manpages or Google what command will do a search over tag annotations. Do I have to dump the records where the tag annotations are stored and search using another tool? I am envisioning git show $(git tag)|grep "first alpha" and hoping there is a better way.

Answer 1

This does use external grep but seems to be more elegant than parsing the output of git show:

git tag -l -n | grep "first alpha"

and you will get very nicely the output: test_1.2.3 first alpha

Note the -n flag, here I assume your annotation are one line long. For longer messages you will need to give a number after -n (lets say -n99) and will be more complicated regarding the grep flags. https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-tag.html

One way to search multiline annotations is with gawk (example bash command line shown):

git tag -l -n99 | gawk -v pat='<some regex>' -- '/^\S/ {tag=$1} $0~pat { print tag }'

/^\S/ {tag=$1} saves each tag name in turn, and $0~pat { print tag }' prints the tag name when a match is found.

Answer 2

You need git show on the dereferenced tag for exploring the content of the annotated tag "first alpha release":

git show $(git show-ref -d -s --tags "first tag release"|tail -1| awk '{print $1}')

That being said, a git show directly with the tag would give the same result, except for the tag metadata displayed first.

git show $(git tag|grep "first alpha")

That would show the content of all tags whose tag name includes "first alpha".