Jenkins Git Plugin: How to build specific tag?

Question

I was able to do that by using the "branches to build" parameter:

Branch Specifier (blank for default): tags/[tag-name]

Replace [tag-name] by the name of your tag.

None of these answers were sufficient for me, using Jenkins CI v.1.555, Git Client plugin v.1.6.4, and Git plugin 2.0.4.

I wanted a job to build for one Git repository for one specific, fixed (i.e., non-parameterized) tag. I had to cobble together a solution from the various answers plus the "build a Git tag" blog post cited by Thilo.

1. Make sure you push your tag to the remote repository with git push --tags
2. In the "Git Repository" section of your job, under the "Source Code Management" heading, click "Advanced".
3. In the field for Refspec, add the following text: +refs/tags/*:refs/remotes/origin/tags/*
4. Under "Branches to build", "Branch specifier", put */tags/<TAG_TO_BUILD> (replacing <TAG_TO_BUILD> with your actual tag name).

Adding the Refspec for me turned out to be critical. Although it seemed the git repositories were fetching all the remote information by default when I left it blank, the Git plugin would nevertheless completely fail to find my tag. Only when I explicitly specified "get the remote tags" in the Refspec field was the Git plugin able to identify and build from my tag.

Update 2014-5-7: Unfortunately, this solution does come with an undesirable side-effect for Jenkins CI (v.1.555) and the Git repository push notification mechanism à la Stash Webhook to Jenkins: any time any branch on the repository is updated in a push, the tag build jobs will also fire again. This leads to a lot of unnecessary re-builds of the same tag jobs over and over again. I have tried configuring the jobs both with and without the "Force polling using workspace" option, and it seemed to have no effect. The only way I could prevent Jenkins from making the unnecessary builds for the tag jobs is to clear the Refspec field (i.e., delete the +refs/tags/*:refs/remotes/origin/tags/*).

If anyone finds a more elegant solution, please edit this answer with an update. I suspect, for example, that maybe this wouldn't happen if the refspec specifically was +refs/tags/<TAG TO BUILD>:refs/remotes/origin/tags/<TAG TO BUILD> rather than the asterisk catch-all. For now, however, this solution is working for us, we just remove the extra Refspec after the job succeeds.

Can't you tell Jenkins to build from a Ref name? If so then it's

refs/tags/tag-name

From all the questions I see about Jenkins and Hudson, I'd suggest switching to TeamCity. I haven't had to edit any configuration files to get TeamCity to work.

If you are using Jenkins pipelines and want to checkout a specific tag (eg: a TAG parameter of your build), here is what you can do:

stage('Checkout') {
  steps {
    checkout scm: [$class: 'GitSCM', userRemoteConfigs: [[url: 'YOUR_GIT_REPO_URL.git', credentialsId: 'YOUR_GIT_CREDENTIALS_ID' ]], branches: [[name: 'refs/tags/${TAG}']]], poll: false
  }
}

I did something like this and it worked :

Source Code Management

 Git    
    Repositories    


 Advance

Name: ref
Refspec : +refs/tags/*:refs/remotes/origin/tags/* 

 Branches to build  
 Branch Specifier (blank for 'any') : v0.9.5.2

Jenkins log confirmed that it was getting the source from the tag

Checking out Revision 0b4d6e810546663e931cccb45640583b596c24b9 (v0.9.5.2)