Hi Gary, I think your patch is based on an invalid premise: That somehow "git describe" is at fault. Actually, the diagnostic you reported suggests that your gnulib repository has no tag, which means your environment is the cause, not git. A full clone of gnulib always has at least the v0.0 tag that "git describe" uses.
Please revert your change and instead fix your local repository. I find that the commit-count part of that "git describe" output is useful. Otherwise, it is much harder to compare two gnulib version indicators. Thanks, Jim
