www.nico.schottelius.org/blog/how-to-show-the-latest-git-tag.mdwn

[[!meta title="How to show the latest git tag"]]

## TL;DR

If you want to show the name of the latest tag, use:

    git for-each-ref --sort=-taggerdate --count=1 --format '%(tag)' refs/tags

## Some background

The command *git for-each-ref* is pretty useful if you want to find something
in a number of commits (or tags in this case). It allows you to use variations of
output and sorting methods. For example:

### Show all tags including the message

    git for-each-ref --format '%(refname) %(contents:subject)' refs/tags

(this is btw. very similar to **git tag -n1**)

### Show all tags sorted by date, oldest first

    git for-each-ref --sort=taggerdate --format '%(refname)' refs/tags

### Show all tags sorted by date, newest first

    git for-each-ref --sort=-taggerdate --format '%(refname)' refs/tags

### Show latest two tags

    git for-each-ref --count=2 --sort=-taggerdate --format '%(refname)' refs/tags

### Show latest tag with its non-ambiguous short name

    git for-each-ref --sort=-taggerdate --count=1 --format '%(refname:short)' refs/tags

### Show latest tag

    git for-each-ref --count=1 --sort=-taggerdate --format '%(tag)' refs/tags 

(note: this is the same as the previous one, but uses the *tag* field)


[[!tag git ungleich]]