diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index a01431df2..0f204772b 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ See the bottom of this document for help on installing the linting and style ref
 
 Fish source should limit the C++ features it uses to those available in C++11. It should not use exceptions.
 
+## Versioning
+
+The fish version is constructed by the *build_tools/git_version_gen.sh* script. For developers the version is the branch name plus the output of `git describe --always --dirty --tags`. Normally the main part of the version will be the closest annotate tag. Which itself is usually the most recent release number (e.g., `2.6.0`). It can be useful to create a lightweight tag to make it clear that a fish binary is based on a particular development branch. For example, `git tag 3.0alpha` to make it clear that fish was built from the 3.x major release development branch regardless of the branch name.
+
 ## Include What You Use
 
 You should not depend on symbols being visible to a `*.cpp` module from `#include` statements inside another header file. In other words if your module does `#include "common.h"` and that header does `#include "signal.h"` your module should not assume the sub-include is present. It should instead directly `#include "signal.h"` if it needs any symbol from that header. That makes the actual dependencies much clearer. It also makes it easy to modify the headers included by a specific header file without having to worry that will break any module (or header) that includes a particular header.
@@ -132,6 +136,8 @@ code to ignore
 // clang-format on
 ```
 
+However, as I write this there are no places in the code where we use this and I can't think of any legitimate reasons for exempting blocks of code from clang-format.
+
 ## Fish Script Style Guide
 
 1. All fish scripts, such as those in the *share/functions* and *tests* directories, should be formatted using the `fish_indent` command.
diff --git a/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh b/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
index ac3c26186..b5bffa599 100755
--- a/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
+++ b/build_tools/git_version_gen.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ DEF_VER=unknown
 if test -f version
 then
 	VN=$(cat version) || VN="$DEF_VER"
-elif ! VN=$(git describe --always --dirty 2>/dev/null); then
+elif ! VN=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)/$(git describe --always --dirty --tags 2>/dev/null); then
 	VN="$DEF_VER"
 fi