Re: git-2.51.0: Fetching tags does not work

From: David Bohman <debohman@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 3, 2025, 01:41 UTC
Message-ID: <CAB9xhmPAe1z8wqWnbpPuPE=y=nuKMsGG3_bk+DkGmXDfshaaiA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAB9xhmPw6P1J2a3P+btUT1chhNQrhcx3pSkq+vqZbhFhCqcX9w@mail.gmail.com>

I am able to reproduce this locally using a bare main repository, a local bare clone of it, and a non bare clone of the main to insert revisions and tags into the main. If you move an existing tag in the main using push -f and then try to fetch --tags into the bare clone, it fails to insert a new tag into the bare clone:

% ( cd test2.git; git fetch --tags )
From /private/tmp/test
 * branch            HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
 ! [rejected]        stable     -> stable  (would clobber existing tag)
 * [new tag]         v5         -> v5
% ( cd test2.git; git fetch --tags )
From /private/tmp/test
 * branch            HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
 ! [rejected]        stable     -> stable  (would clobber existing tag)
 * [new tag]         v5         -> v5
% print $?
1
% ( cd test2.git; git fetch --tags )
From /private/tmp/test
 * branch            HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
 ! [rejected]        stable     -> stable  (would clobber existing tag)
 * [new tag]         v5         -> v5
% ( cd test2.git; git tag ) | grep v5
%

On Sun, Nov 2, 2025 at 4:47 PM David Bohman <debohman@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 28 quoted lines

>
> I am sorry to have to bring this up again, but I am still occasionally
> seeing this problem with git 2.51.2.
>
> What is happening is that I am cloning a repository as bare, and then
> later I try to fetch the new content including the tags:
>
> % ( cd bind9.git; git fetch --tags )
> From https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/bind9
>  * branch                  HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
>  ! [rejected]              stable     -> stable  (would clobber existing tag)
>  * [new tag]               v9.18.41   -> v9.18.41
>  * [new tag]               v9.20.15   -> v9.20.15
>  * [new tag]               v9.21.14   -> v9.21.14
> % ( cd bind9.git; git fetch --tags )
> From https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/bind9
>  * branch                  HEAD       -> FETCH_HEAD
>  ! [rejected]              stable     -> stable  (would clobber existing tag)
>  * [new tag]               v9.18.41   -> v9.18.41
>  * [new tag]               v9.20.15   -> v9.20.15
>  * [new tag]               v9.21.14   -> v9.21.14
> % print $?
> 1
> % ( cd bind9.git; git tag ) | grep v9.20.15
> %
>
> As you can see, it is getting an error for one of the tags, but it is
> also failing to record the other new tags into the repository.