Jonathan Tan [off-list ref] writes:
When cloning a branchless and tagless but not refless remote using
protocol v0 or v1, Git calls transport_fetch_refs() with an empty ref
list. This makes the clone fail with the message "remote transport
reported error".
Despite what the title says, I do not think this would be so
"unusual". To a freshly created repository, if you added a remote
or two, fetched from them, but haven't created a commit of your own
(or forked from these remotes) yet, you'd have no refs in heads/ and
tags/ but refs in refs/remotes/.
2.35 would fail as expected with "remote transport reported error"
in such a situation. With your fix, it creates an empty repository
with expected fetch refspec.
Which looks good.