diff --git a/documentation/dev-manual/external-scm.rst b/documentation/dev-manual/external-scm.rst
index e7ab8a4c6..adab4370f 100644
--- a/documentation/dev-manual/external-scm.rst
+++ b/documentation/dev-manual/external-scm.rst
@@ -13,9 +13,17 @@ Subversion (SVN) and Git.

 To enable this behavior, the :term:`PV` of
 the recipe needs to include a ``+`` sign in its assignment.
-Here is an example::
+You can do this in one of two ways:

-   PV = "1.2.3+git"
+-  Manually assign a version number and the string "+git"
+   in the recipe::
+
+      PV = "1.2.3+git"
+
+-  A more elegant way is to simply append the "+git" string to the
+   value of :term:`PV` already extracted from the recipe file name::
+
+      PV .= "+git"

 :term:`Bitbake` later includes the source control information in :term:`PKGV`
 during the packaging phase.