diff --git a/jemalloc/configure.ac b/jemalloc/configure.ac
index 21f502c6..b0d470a0 100644
--- a/jemalloc/configure.ac
+++ b/jemalloc/configure.ac
@@ -637,7 +637,7 @@ dnl
 
 dnl Set VERSION if source directory has an embedded git repository.
 if test -d "${srcroot}../.git" ; then
-  git describe --long > ${srcroot}VERSION
+  git describe --long --abbrev=40 > ${srcroot}VERSION
 fi
 jemalloc_version=`cat ${srcroot}VERSION`
 jemalloc_version_major=`echo ${jemalloc_version} | tr ".g-" " " | awk '{print [$]1}'`