When we take the SDL revision from REVISION.txt, since #14114 was fixed, we add a SDL- prefix.
But if I download SDL3-3.2.28.tar.gz and unpack it, the SDL_revision.h included in the tarball doesn't have that, and neither does its CMake template:
SDL3-3.2.28$ grep SDL_REVISION include/build_config/SDL_revision.h.cmake
#define SDL_REVISION "release-3.2.28-0-g7f3ae3d57 (" SDL_VENDOR_INFO ")"
#define SDL_REVISION "release-3.2.28-0-g7f3ae3d57"
SDL3-3.2.28$ grep SDL_REVISION include/SDL3/SDL_revision.h
#define SDL_REVISION "Some arbitrary string decided at SDL build time"
#define SDL_REVISION "release-3.2.28-0-g7f3ae3d57 (" SDL_VENDOR_INFO ")"
#define SDL_REVISION "release-3.2.28-0-g7f3ae3d57"
The result is that builds from git can be inspected for their version number with strings | grep SDL-, but builds from official tarballs (which many distros prefer because they can verify the GPG signature) cannot.