I don't know anything about straight, but this sounds like what
you'd
get if you try to generate org-version.el in an Org repo without
tags.
This is the correct assessment.
Straight has a user option, `straight-vc-git-default-clone-depth',
which may be customized
to perform shallow clones of N commits. I've ammended the default
Org recipe to ensure a
full clone is performed. I've contacted Niels on his github to
illustrate how this can be done on a per-recipe basis as well via
the `:depth` keyword.
Thank you,
Nick Vollmer