Is there a simple way to “git describe” a remote repository?

Question

I want to execute the following command on a remote server:

git archive --prefix=\"$tag/\" --remote=\"ssh://$gitserver/var/git/$repo\" \"$tag\" | tar -xvf-
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Answer 1

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
  FS = "[ /^]+"
  while ("git ls-remote " ARGV[1] "| sort -Vk2" | getline) {
    if (!sha)
      sha = substr($0, 1, 7)
    tag = $3
  }
  while ("curl -s " ARGV[1] "/releases/tag/" tag | getline)
    if ($3 ~ "commits")
      com = $2
  printf com ? "%s-%s-g%s\n" : "%s\n", tag, com, sha
}

Sample output

$ git-describe-remote.awk https://github.com/stedolan/jq
jq-1.4-148-g89791a0