Tags for Releases

[jherdman]

Tagging future releases means it's easy to discern the code as-at a version number. Knowing this makes it easier to track down bugs, or determine features available at a certain version.

[spikex]

Got a link to some best practices?

[jherdman]

I don't know if anyone has this written down anywhere, but the basic procedure is like this:

• Have a VERSION constant somewhere, and bump it's number according to Semver
• Next, use Bundler's Gem tasks to first build, and then release your gem. Doing so will both tag and push your gem to Rubygems.org

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't push a tag unless you really mean it. Git doesn't retag things behind the back of people who have cloned your repo, so just call your release something else and move on. For more information, see On Re-tagging.