Tag via Github vs. Tag Locally and then git push --tags

[oleibman]

We have a project with a master branch and some prior branches maintained with security patches. For the master branch, I always use git tag followed by git push --tags , and that works as desired. For the prior branches, I am not sure how to tell git/github that this is not the latest release, so I use the github interface to tag the new release, unchecking "latest". This works almost correctly, except that the "release" step always fails Error: Error 422: Validation Failed: {"resource":"Release","code":"already_exists","field":"tag_name"}. All the release steps have succeeded, however - everything is updated in packagist, for example. The only thing that is "wrong" is that the commit history for the branch says the commit had an error.

So, 2 questions:

1. If I decide to switch methods for the prior releases, is there a way to indicate locally that the current branch should not be the latest release when it is tagged? (If you don't think "latest" is important, please indicate that as well.)
2. If I continue to use github for the prior releases, is there a way to avoid the error indication in the release step?