How to make different version labels between two branches in a git repository?

I have a version string in my application. Can I append a "master" string in my master and "development" in my development branch?

For now I can merge dev to master, change a version manually to "master", merge back to dev branch, change manually back to "development". Can I avoid that merging?

Edit: I've found similar questions:

best way to versionize different git branches

Show the latest commit value within a web application?

The only solution I've found it to use an output of "git describe". But this requires to deliver a git with a sole purpose of displaying a versio开发者_如何学编程n. Maybe git can do some automatization when merging to the specific branch?