I don't agree that debrelease should have primary responsibility for creating a tag. This is the job of 'debcommit --release' (usual workflow is hack; debcommit; hack; debcommit; dch -r; debcommit --release; debrelease -S). That said, it would be fair enough for debrelease either to refuse to upload if you haven't committed everything in your tree and tagged it, or to offer to run 'debcommit --release' for you.
I don't agree that debrelease should have primary responsibility for creating a tag. This is the job of 'debcommit --release' (usual workflow is hack; debcommit; hack; debcommit; dch -r; debcommit --release; debrelease -S). That said, it would be fair enough for debrelease either to refuse to upload if you haven't committed everything in your tree and tagged it, or to offer to run 'debcommit --release' for you.