def get_version (pkg = __name__, public = False):
  """
  Uses `git describe` to dynamically generate a version for the
  current code.  The version is effecvtively a traditional tri-tuple
  ala (major, minor, patch), with the addenda that in this case the
  patch string is a combination of the number of commits since the
  tag, plus the ID of the last commit.  Further, the patch will be
  extended with "-dirty" if there are uncommitted changes in the
  current codeset.

    eg 1.0.1-gd5aa65e-dirty

  Assumes that the tags fit the regex [0-9]*.[0-9]*
  """
  try:
    cwd = os.getcwd ()
  except: # pylint: disable=W0702
    cwd = None
  try:
    try:
      mod = __import__ (pkg)
      path = os.path.dirname (mod.__file__)
      os.chdir (path)
    except: # pylint: disable=W0702
      pass
    o = subprocess.check_output (
      DEFAULT_GITCMD.split (),
      stderr = subprocess.PIPE,
      shell = False).decode ().strip ()
    s = o.replace ("-", ".", 1).replace ("-", "+", 1).replace ("-", ".", 1)
  except: # pylint: disable=W0702
    s = pkg_resources.get_distribution (pkg.split (".")[0]).version
  if cwd is not None:
    os.chdir (cwd)
  if public:
    vals = s.split (".")
    patch = ((vals[2][:vals[2].find ("+")])
             if vals[2].find ("+") != -1 else vals[2])
    info = ((vals[0], vals[1], patch, "dev1")
            if len (vals) == 4 else (vals[0], vals[1], patch))
    return ".".join (info), info
  else:
    return s, s.split (".")