Git tags vs branches

Sunil Kumar
2 min readNov 18, 2023

Git tags and branches are important Git concepts that enable developers to work on different project versions simultaneously. Both play a vital role in organizing development work to make changes more manageable and trackable, but they serve different purposes in the development process.

Git Branches:

Purpose:

  • Git branches are used to separate work on features or bug fixes, allowing developers to work on different parts of a project without interfering with each other.
  • Long-lived development efforts are often done on branches and are expected to be merged back into the main branch upon completion.

Lifecycle:

  • Feature branches can have a long lifespan, lasting the duration of a development cycle.

Example:

  • Creating a feature branch: git checkout -b feature-branch

Usage:

  • This is often used for concurrent development, resolving errors, and implementing test features.

Git Tags:

Purpose:

  • Git tags mark specific points in history to capture software versions.
  • Tags are typically used to mark stable points in the codebase that correspond to specific releases.

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Sunil Kumar
Sunil Kumar

Written by Sunil Kumar

With an extensive professional experience spanning over 16 years in the IT industry, I am a seasoned expert in AWS Cloud, DevOps, FastAPI, and Python.

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