git describe fails with “fatal: No names found, cannot describe anything.”

Question

I\'m using git 1.7.1 on Ubuntu 10.10 amd64, and I\'m trying to extract the hash of my repository HEAD to use it in an automated version information that I compile into my pr

Answer 1

This happens if you don't have any tags in your repository. If the repository does have tags, then you're in a shallow clone (this is the default in CI systems like TravisCI or GitHub Actions).

To fetch the history (including tags) from within a shallow clone, run

git fetch --prune --unshallow

For example, in the case of GitHub actions:

- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- run: git fetch --prune --unshallow

Afterwards, git describe should work again.