@zekjur in Git, you can mark files as export-subst [1] and thus place the describe output in git-archive generated tarballs (like the ones GitHub offers) via "$Format:%(describe)$" or similar. Putting that into the VERSION file makes `git describe || cat VERSION` do the right thing in 99.999%[2] of the cases. [1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-archive/2.29.0#ATTRIBUTES [2] not scientifically proven