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gitazure-devopsvisual-studio-2019team-explorer

What does master tag mean in history for Git in Visual Studio 2019?

I am using Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition for an asp.net project with Azure DevOps Git as the source control. I have been using this source control without issues for the past month.

But today, when I clicked on Commit and Push drop-down button in the Changes tab of Team Explorer then on viewing the history of project it showed a master tag for most recent commit/push that I had just made as shown in the screenshot below.

master tag in git history in visual studio 2019

Question

Why did the master tag suddenly appear for most recent commit/push and what does it mean? I had not input any tag for this commit/push but this was added by Azure DevOps automatically. Such a master tag never shows for any of the prior commits in the past month.

I have only 2 Git branches in my project - a local branch origin/master and a remote branch origin/master as in the screenshot below.

git branches in my visual studio project

Solution

  • This is not a tag. It is letting you know that's the commit to which the master branch currently points.

    The toolbar in the History window has three buttons on it where you can toggle seeing local branches, remote tracking branches, and tags labeled onto the corresponding commits. By default, branches are rendered red and tags are green. Hovering the mouse over the label should also tell you if it's a branch or tag. In your example above, I believe the tooltip would say "Head for branch master".

    Hope this helps.