Repo clones over HTTPS are broken for slow connections

[ell1e]

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Introduction: Repo clones over HTTPS are broken for slow connections due to what seems to be an error on GitHub's end, and GitHub apparently doesn't plan to fix it. This is can be a big issue since e.g. this also breaks any submodules or install scripts that indirectly access any GitHub repo of any kind that isn't trivially sized.

I am writing this here so people can reference this issue.

This is who is affected:

• Your connection is reliable enough to download 100MB+ files without a hiccup or need to pause and resume in at least the majority of cases.

• You can clone big repositories on gitlab.com and codeberg.org and other alternate git repository platforms without issues, other than at most rare hiccups which don't repeat on 2nd try.

• But your connection is DSL era slow, 5mbit/s or slower.

This is how it looks like:

$ git clone https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome
Cloning into 'Font-Awesome'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 87765, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (12255/12255), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (5196/5196), done.
error: RPC failed; curl 92 HTTP/2 stream 5 was not closed cleanly: CANCEL (err 8)
error: 4872 bytes of body are still expected
fetch-pack: unexpected disconnect while reading sideband packet
fatal: early EOF
fatal: fetch-pack: invalid index-pack output

This is why it seems to be an error on Github's end:

• I found others with the same problem, although due to people usually having faster internet it's somewhat rare.

• Cloning similarly sized or magnitudes larger repositories with HTTPS from any other platform like gitlab.com works fine, just github.com is affected.

• Cloning the repositories from GitHub via SSH instead works.

• Downloading anything else, like archives, of even larger size via HTTPs from GitHub works. Only HTTPS git clone doesn't.

• GitHub's support admitted in response to me that this is likely a problem on their end, but that they don't plan to fix it any time soon. At least this is my understanding of their responses.

[ell1e]

This is still broken as of today, 2024-11-07.

[riv19]

Yes, not possible to clone repositories on 4G/5G networks. Are these networks outdated ?
And don't try to configure the client side with "http.postBuffer" and similar - doesn't help.

[ell1e]

I think it's somehow related to the server having a timeout if in time window X there were less than Y bytes transferred. And this timeout seems to have a really high threshold to clear. This means if the connection isn't like, 20mbit/s or faster, the server will just kill your connection even though it's making progress steadily. At least that's my best guess what could be going on.