Assuming that you have a production branch, and you make release build often. Adding tags to the production branch seems not a very good idea, when you would like to trace at which where is the release produced.

Creating another branch for release may be a better idea. Here is how.

0. Create a release branch starting from the root

So that release and production have the same starting point.

1. Mergingproduction to release

Makes the merge commit represents the checkpoint of the release.

git checkout release
git merge -e --no-ff production

• Then you may edit the merge commit comment for your reference (e.g. “version xx.xx”).

2. Tie release back to production

So that release can continue tracing production.

git checkout production
git merge -e --no-ff release

• Then you may edit the merge commit comment for your reference as well.

3. Cherry-pick commits after production

If you have some other commits after production and would like to put them after production, use cherry-pick:

git cherry-pick <commit right before the commits to be cherry-picked>..<the last commit to be cherry-picked>

4. Tell Git not to track a folder (Added on 18 Jan 2021)

The solution is based on Stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16346535/recursive-git-update-index-assume-unchanged

git ls-files -z myFolderToIgnore/ | xargs -0 git update-index --assume-unchanged