diff --git a/tpm2.0-tools.changes b/tpm2.0-tools.changes
index 362d529..73e0ab0 100644
--- a/tpm2.0-tools.changes
+++ b/tpm2.0-tools.changes
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+-------------------------------------------------------------------
+Tue May  4 08:55:06 UTC 2021 - Matthias Gerstner <matthias.gerstner@suse.com>
+
+- fix `--version` output of tools. Since now autoreconf is called and
+  configure.ac attempts to fetch the version from git (which we don't have
+  during building), the version was empty. Fix this by replacing the git
+  invocation in configure.ac.
+
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 Thu Jan 28 09:49:06 UTC 2021 - Matthias Gerstner <matthias.gerstner@suse.com>
 
diff --git a/tpm2.0-tools.spec b/tpm2.0-tools.spec
index 1fbe157..931c2f8 100644
--- a/tpm2.0-tools.spec
+++ b/tpm2.0-tools.spec
@@ -71,6 +71,9 @@ associated interfaces.
 
 %build
 # TODO: remove autoreconf once fix_pie_linking patch is no longer needed
+# until then we need to repair the version specification which configure.ac
+# wants to read from GIT which isn't there.
+sed -i 's/m4_esyscmd_s([^)]\+)/%{version}/g' configure.ac
 autoreconf -fvi
 %configure --disable-static
 make %{?_smp_mflags}