Re: Suggestion: error "tag ... already exists" should distinguish between tagging different or same commit:

From: Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 9, 2025, 21:03 UTC
Message-ID: <CAE1pOi0bFpuGuFSEHDUgv3mcwwwgXAEn8q3QSwF33ucqFWJ_AQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqqzzspt0i.fsf@gitster.g>

Clearly, I have not used everything that "git tag" offers. :-)

So, to clarify, I was thinking (naively?) that Git would check that the tag as requested is _exactly_ the same as the existing tag. Only _that_ specific scenario would then not fail.

On Mon, Jun 9, 2025 at 1:19 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

>
> Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Does it really make sense for that first example to fail, though? "git
> > tag hello v1.9.5" is an idempotent operation, isn't it? The second
> > attempt is a no-op?
> >
> > If "git tag ..." simply does nothing if the tag already exists (as
> > requested) then that would make the OP's issue go away: only the 2nd
> > example would fail.
>
> I do not think I personally mind that direction; when I responded, I
> thought that in the example, 'hello' is initially pointing at
> something entirely different (perhaps v2.0.0), though.
>
> But it may be tricky to do, though.
>
> It is easy for lightweight tags, but you'd have to fail an attempt
> to add an annotated and/or signed tag without -f anyway, so you have
> to be prepared to answer "why does this behave differently with and
> without -a/-s?".