Why is my anonym git repository not up-to-date?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 3:11 PM, jodoe <herrmicha at gmx.net> wrote:
> Jacobo Aragunde Pérez wrote
>> Yes, but you must ask git explicitly to get all tags. Try:
>>
>> ./g fetch --tags
>> ...
>
> Thank you, Jacobo, that worked!
>
> Now I have & can see all the tags.
>
> Only the philosophical question remains, why the tags have to be explicitly
> fetched....

Because git is trying to fetch the minimum necessary to fullfill your request.
so by default you will get tags that comes for 'free' iow tags on
commit that you need to get anyway.
but any tag that would require to fetch more commit than what you
asked for, are not fetch by default.

what is it you asked for when you just say 'git fetch, you'll ask ?
well that depend on what is in your .git/config, but typically it is
something like

fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

which will fetch all the 'heads', iow named branches

The way releng manage the release process means that tags are placed
on headless 1-commit branch out of the release branches... that means
they are not on any named branches and therefore are not fetch by
default.

Norbert