git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref

Question

I am cloning a single branch from a repository and creating a tag in a python script. The commands are as follows.

git clone -b master --single-branch 

        

Answer 1

If you have access to the remote repository

cd /path/to/remote/repository
git config --bool core.bare true

Answer 2

I had the same issue. You have to commit first before tagging

git commit

because you put tags on commits. So when there is no commit (like in your situation), you can't create a tag.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. I cloned from a bare repo and tried to use 'git tag' in that cloned repo, and that is where I was getting the error. To fix it I had to at least one push up to master before I could begin tagging. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I also faced git tag: fatal: Failed to resolve 'HEAD' as a valid ref issue when I was missing -m in the following command.(during tag creation)

git tag -a testtag 'test'

changing to

git tag -a testtag -m 'test'

fixed the issue

Answer 5

I ran into the same issue and was able to fix it by changing from

git tag -a testtag -m 'test'

to

git tag -a testtag -m "test"

I was running in Windows 7. Hope this helps :-)