If you are releasing software with Git, you are bound to deal with tags. Tags describe the different software releases in the repository. There are two types of tags, a lightweight tag and an annotated tag. The lightweight tag is very similar to a branch, since it is just a named reference, such as refs/tags/version123 . This points to the commit hash of the commit you are tagging; whereas if it were a branch, it would be refs/heads/version123. The difference is that the branch moves forward when you work and commit to it. A tag will always point to the same commit hash. We will discuss the annotated tag shortly.