Hi, Many projects use 'git archive' to generate tarballs, especially because this functionality is exposed through gitlab/github and the like. It's also popular to base the version string on the output of 'git describe' and its variants, for example 'git describe --first-parent --dirty'. Now while it's possible to substitute various information into the tarball using the export-subst machinery, there seems to be no way to substitute the output of 'git describe' and its variants. Specifically, when the commit being archived is untagged, there seems no way to mention an ancestral tag in the way of 'git describe'. It seems to me that adding a pretty format for git describe would be very useful. Is there any technical reason that speaks against this? Cheers, Christoph
