Re: Bug: Git: Clone: University Network: No Output on Terminal

On 2020-02-17 at 08:02:44, Manish Devgan wrote:

Hello,

I am a university student from India and I was trying to clone the
xfwm4 git repository from the git-url :
https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4
I was trying to clone this repository over my university network and
it didn't work. I worked my way around by using my mobile
wireless-hotspot for the same and was able to do it just fine.
The next day I tried doing the exact same thing since I couldn't get
an answer from our university if any such firewall was blocking me
from cloning it. But this time instead of failing to reach the url the
command ran with the following output:

gabru-md@bhaalu:~/Desktop$ git clone https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4
Cloning into 'xfwm4'...

after waiting for a few minutes the command didn't fail but it didn't
show any output/stats like it does when I try to clone a repository
from Github which is definitely not blocked on the university network.
for eg.

So it looks like git.xfce.org is using the old dumb HTTP protocol, which
basically serves static content.  Git has to look up the references,
attempt to download each object or pack, and then determine which ones
have the objects it needs.  The server provides no assistance in that
regard.

gabru-md@bhaalu:~/Desktop$ git clone https://github.com/gabru-md/stl-cpp
Cloning into 'stl-cpp'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 186, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (186/186), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (128/128), done.
remote: Total 186 (delta 92), reused 146 (delta 56), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (186/186), 105.58 KiB | 256.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (92/92), done.

Here, GitHub uses the smart HTTP protocol.  The client fetches the
references and then reports what data it has.  The server actively
computes the differences and sends a single pack containing only the
required objects.  In addition, newer versions of the smart HTTP
protocol contain a sideband where the server can report status, like the
"remote:" message you see above.  The status messages on the client side
come from unpacking and indexing the single pack received.

So this is working by design, although it's confusing for users.  The
dumb HTTP protocol doesn't know how much stuff it needs to fetch—it
could be a single object or pack, or it could be tens of thousands of
items—so it's hard to provide any progress report on the client side.
Additionally, because the server isn't actively producing a pack and is
just serving static files, there's no way for it to provide status
output at all.

Hopefully this answers your question, although I agree the answer is a
little unsatisfying.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204