Listing the most recent tag of a remote repository produces a different answer from cloning that repository and then describing its tags. E.g.

```
$ ​git ls-remote --refs git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git | tail -1
dcba104ffdcf2f27bc5058d8321e7a6c2fe8f27e    refs/tags/v2.9.5
$ git clone -q git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git gitdir && cd gitdir && git describe --tags
v2.31.1-606-gdf6c4f7

```

How do these two kinds of values relate to one another? How are they different?

I understand that "[tag names are local](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66316791/how-to-do-git-log-or-git-describe-for-remote-tags)" and my question may relate to that, but I think I don't understand that phrase's implications. I did try [another suggestion](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7732157/output-from-git-ls-remote-shows-tags-not-found-in-git-tag-l) to `git fetch --tags` before calling `describe`, to no avail.

What I ultimately want to do is to programmatically find the most stable release or tag if they aren't using releases, and check out that version to build it locally.