GitHub releases don't create annotated tags

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I just discovered that creating a tag along with a GitHub Release creates a lightweight tag instead of an annotated tag. This goes against git best practices. In addition I saw a reference to someone saying that perhaps lightweight tags do not get included in forks of repositories?

This prevents me from using the GitHub UI to create a tag for releases, and instead I have to push an annotated tag and then create a release from it after.

There is already a discussion about this in #4924, but it is not marked as a bug so it's not getting much attention.

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[lettercode]

Please give this bug some resources. It's important to have annotated tags for an ISO 9001 certification (author, signing and timestamp guarantee) and for now we need to do this operation manually and then create a release on top of it, which is time consuming.

[kojiromike]

Nowadays if you ask an LLM how to create an annotated tag with a GitHub release, it may well say "Newer versions of the GitHub API now allow an optional tag_message parameter."

This is an hallucination, though. GitLab supports this parameter. GitHub still does not.

I want to post this quote from git's own documentation.

$ git help tag | grep -A3 -F 'release' | head -n4
       Annotated tags are meant for release while lightweight tags are meant
       for private or temporary object labels. For this reason, some git
       commands for naming objects (like git describe) will ignore lightweight
       tags by default.

It could not be any clearer. Releases go hand-in-hand with annotated tags. This is one of a few examples of GitHub eroding trust with its fairly technical user base by demonstrating that it doesn't understand git that well. (And GitHub really ought to be the one teaching the rest of us how to make the best use of it.)

[mr-git]

There have been a "workaround" for about 12 years already: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21690298/how-to-create-a-github-release-with-an-annotated-tag :)

Most probably all VIP clients have custom scripts in place or do not care about annotations - thus there is no need for this feature.

[lettercode]

If you’d buy a car that works but needs the injector adjusted or reseated every 20 miles, you don’t really need to fix it, right? Would you trust it to drive through Death Valley? Wouldn’t you rather pay a mechanic to fix it (and yes, I’d be fine if that feature came with the paid subscription)?
The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any mechanic who can actually do it… so I’m wondering if I should just change cars.
And about the workaround — since it’s existed for over a decade, GitHub has clearly had the opportunity to integrate it natively...