diff --git a/.github/workflows/tests.yml b/.github/workflows/tests.yml
index 9ca5a20..d1a8baa 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/tests.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/tests.yml
@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@ jobs:
     steps:
       - name: Set up Git repository
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
+        # unfortunately we need to fetch all tags for version.py to work
+        fetch-depth: 0
 
       - name: Fetch all Git tags
         # this is necessary for version.py because git describe does not work on a shallow clone:
@@ -37,7 +39,6 @@ jobs:
         run: black --check .
 
       - name: Run unit tests (except the ones using Gurobi and CPLEX)
-        shell: bash -l {0}
         run: python -m pytest --cov=. --cov-report=lcov -k "not gurobi and not cplex" tests
 
       - name: Coveralls test coverage
diff --git a/syfop/version.py b/syfop/version.py
index 95e7a6a..e3f91c1 100644
--- a/syfop/version.py
+++ b/syfop/version.py
@@ -4,7 +4,16 @@
 def get_version():
     """Get the latest Git tag and prepend 'v' and use the Git comit hash as suffix if the current
     commit has not Git tag."""
-    git_tag = subprocess.check_output(["git", "describe", "--tags"]).decode().strip()
+    # TODO this will raise an exception if:
+    #  - there are no tags
+    #  - if it is a shallow clone  with --depth 1
+    try:
+        git_tag = subprocess.check_output(["git", "describe", "--tags"], stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
+    except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
+        raise RuntimeError(f"Unable to get version from Git: {e}: {e.output.decode()}")
+
+    # TODO we don't check if the tag is a valid version string (e.g. v0.1.0).
+    git_tag = git_tag.decode().strip()
     version = git_tag.lstrip("v")
 
     # convert string from git-describe to a valid PEP440 version string