I think this is because as part of the build process,
build-common/bin/gitrev.pl
runs and tries to get the version from the Git tag list. Since the source zip/tarball do not have any Git information,
it has no way to parse a version and reports nogit.
If you download a release as a zip or tarball
wget https://github.com/genome/bam-readcount/archive/refs/tags/v1.0.1.tar.gz
and build it, running
bam-readcount --version
showsbam-readcount version: unstable (commit nogit)
If you clone the tag for the release instead (ie, same source code)
git clone -b v1.0.1 --single-branch git@github.com:genome/bam-readcount
and build, the version is correct
bam-readcount version: 1.0.1 (commit e88e18b)
I think this is because as part of the build process,
build-common/bin/gitrev.pl
runs and tries to get the version from the Git tag list. Since the source zip/tarball do not have any Git information, it has no way to parse a version and reports
nogit
.