The configure check defined for LB_BUILDID more or less makes it impossible have any recent tag that is not of the form either 0.0.0.0 or v0_0_0_0. For instance, say I have checked out a commit that is tagged "2.0.59-1morrone" and attempt to configure lustre like so:

./configure --enable-dist --with-downstream-release=1morrone
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
[cut]
checking whether to configure just enough for make dist... yes
checking if this distro uses dpkg... yes
checking for buildid... configure: error: most recent tag found: 2.0.59-1morrone does not match current version 2.0.59.

The build really needs to allow any tag that it doesn't recognize. Heck, I might just have a local tag "very_fine_patch" or "10_things_I_hate_about_autoconf", and the build system needs to not have a problem with that.