Git: Move a branch to a new tag

Question

My personal Wordpress install is cloned from the wordpress git mirror on GitHub. I checked out the 2.7.1 tag to the branch "stable" (git checkout -b stable 2.7.1) and its been running fine since. Now WordPress 2.8 has been released I want to move my stable branch to the 2.8 tag.

I tried the following (all on the stable branch) but get conflicts as it tries to apply each each commit, something doesn't seem right. I have made no local changes/commits on the stable branch.

git fetch 
git fetch --tags
git rebase 2.8

First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
Applying: Prepare the branch for the inevitable.
error: patch failed: wp-includes/version.php:8
error: wp-includes/version.php: patch does not apply
Using index info to reconstruct a base tree...
Falling back to patching base and 3-way merge...
Auto-merging wp-includes/version.php
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in wp-includes/version.php
Failed to merge in the changes.
Patch failed at 0001 Prepare the branch for the inevitable.

When you have resolved this problem run "git rebase --continue".
If you would prefer to skip this patch, instead run "git rebase --skip".
To restore the original branch and stop rebasing run "git rebase --abort".

How do I "move" my stable branch to the 2.8 tag?

Answer 1

Use "git checkout 2.8".

If you want to move "stable", you can simply remove/recreate it:

$ git checkout 2.8
$ git branch -d stable
$ git checkout -b stable

Answer 2

# git checkout stable
# git reset --hard 2.8

There you go.