The documentation for the "git describe --abbrev" flag says that the default value is 7 hexadecimal digits:
The behavior seems to have changed in git 2.11.0 ("default abbreviation length"):
I was able to trigger different behavior using a bash script like the one below:
```sh
#!/bin/bash
DIR=test-git-describe
rm -rf ${DIR}
mkdir ${DIR}
cd ${DIR}
git init
# One-time test results I have seen:
# 10 tags, 10 * 10 commits: 7 hex digits
# 100 tags, 100 * 100 commits: 8 hex digits
FILE=foo
touch ${FILE}
for i in `seq 1 10`; do
echo ${i} >> ${FILE}
git add ${FILE}
git commit -m "Tag update number ${i} to ${FILE}"
git tag -m "Version 1.0.${i}" -a 1.0.${i}
for j in `seq 1 10`; do
echo ${i}-${j} >> ${FILE}
git add ${FILE}
git commit -m "Update number ${i}-${j} to ${FILE}"
done
done
```