`git tag` sorted in chronological order of the date of the commit pointed to

The output from git tag is ordered alphabetically. I would like it to be ordered chronological (the date of the commits they are assigned to, not the date on which they were created), otherwise the output should stay the same.

I’ve tried the suggestion from http://networkadmin20.blogspot.de/2010/08/howto-list-git-tags-by-date.html, but the order is still the same.

To make sure it is not an error with my repository, I tried the following with a clean repository:

soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox % mkdir chronogit
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox % cd chronogit 
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit % git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/soeren/Projects/sandbox/chronogit/.git/
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % touch a
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git add a
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git commit -m 'a'
[master (root-commit) f88e0e9] a
 0 files changed
 create mode 100644 a
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git tag 'A-first'
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git mv a b
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git commit -m 'c'
[master ecc0c08] c
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 rename a => b (100%)
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git tag 'C-second'
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git mv b c
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git commit -m 'b'
[master e72682d] b
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 rename b => c (100%)
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git tag 'B-third'
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git tag
A-first
B-third
C-second
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git for-each-ref refs/tags --sort=taggerdate --format="%(refname:short)"
A-first
B-third
C-second

The desired output is:

A-first
C-second
B-third

or, since inverting it shouldn’t be too hard:

B-third
C-second
A-first

Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this question is pretty similiar, so I tried the following:

soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git log --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty="format:%ai %d"          
2013-09-06 16:08:43 +0200  (HEAD, B-third, master)
2013-09-06 16:08:21 +0200  (C-second)
2013-09-06 16:07:42 +0200  (A-first)

The order is fine, but now I’m fighting with the formatting…

soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git log --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty="format:%(refname:short)"
%(refname:short)
%(refname:short)
%(refname:short)
soeren@ubuntu ~/Projects/sandbox/chronogit (git)-[master] % git log --tags --simplify-by-decoration --format="%(refname:short)" 
%(refname:short)
%(refname:short)
%(refname:short)

Just tested with git 2.8.0:

git tag --sort=committerdate

For a full list of field names you can use, see https://git-scm.com/docs/git-for-each-ref#_field_names

> For commit and tag objects, the special creatordate and creator fields will correspond to the appropriate date or name-email-date tuple from the committer or tagger fields depending on the object type. These are intended for working on a mix of annotated and lightweight tags. > > Fields that have name-email-date tuple as its value (author, committer, and tagger) can be suffixed with name, email, and date to extract the named component.

In git 2.3.3 I can just do this to get them sorted by date:

git tag --sort version:refname

PS: For the record, I also answered the same thing on a duplicate question

git tag | xargs -I@ git log --format=format:"%ai @%n" -1 @ | sort | awk '{print $4}'

For information, to get it in reverse order, prefix it with "-"

git tag --sort=-taggerdate

git log --date-order --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty=format:"%ci %d"

As Alexander pointed out it should be

git tag --sort=taggerdate

for correct chronological order.

edit:

• iff you're interested in the date the tags where pushed, if you're interested in the date of the commits, it should be "commiterdate"

Try this:

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

It works perfectly and very fast for me.

Refer to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6269927/how-can-i-list-all-tags-in-my-git-repository-by-the-date-they-were-created

Another way:

git log --no-walk --tags --decorate --oneline

Example:

$ git log --no-walk --tags --decorate --oneline | head -n5
e214a28f (tag: v4.20.0, origin/4-stable) Release 4.20.0
519512ae (tag: v4.19.0) Release 4.19.0
a201a5ca (tag: v4.18.0) Release 4.18.0
c5037e4a (tag: v4.17.0) Release 4.17.0
9f19351d (tag: v4.16.0) Release 4.16.0

References:

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt---no-walksortedunsorted

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt---tagsltpatterngt

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt---decorateshortfullautono

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#Documentation/git-log.txt---oneline

I want to use taggerdate, but it does not always have a value:

git tag --sort=-taggerdate --format "%(refname:short)   %(taggerdate:short)" | head -5
v41     2018-11-05
v40     2018-11-05
v1      
v10     
v100    

To support the scenario in which taggerdate is not set, fall back on the creatordate and use sort to sort the generated field specifically:

$ git tag --format '%(refname:short)	%(if)%(taggerdate)%(then)%(taggerdate:short)%(else)%(creatordate:short)%(end)' | sort -k2,2 -t$'\t' | head -5
v1	2018-05-15
v2	2018-05-15
v3	2018-05-15
v4	2018-05-24
v5	2018-06-12

Here's the alias:

[alias]
	tags = ! git tag --format '%(refname:short)\t%(if)%(taggerdate)%(then)%(taggerdate:short)%(else)%(creatordate:short)%(end)' | sort -k2,2 -t$'\t'

Thanks to @thomas-sibley for the solution in this thread.