Git for Windows Fails to Clone Repository

[dylan-car]

Existing issues matching what you're seeing

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Git for Windows version

git version 2.54.0.windows.1
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 2b8a3ab140826ac423c2845ef81d4c6ac4f7bf3c
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: D:/git-sdk-64-build-installers/usr/bin/sh
rust: disabled
feature: fsmonitor--daemon
gettext: enabled
libcurl: 8.19.0
OpenSSL: OpenSSL 3.5.6 7 Apr 2026
zlib: 1.3.2
SHA-1: SHA1_DC
SHA-256: SHA256_BLK
default-ref-format: files
default-hash: sha1

Windows version

Windows 11

Windows CPU architecture

x86_64 (64-bit)

Additional Windows version information

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22631.6199]

Options set during installation

Editor Option: VIM
Custom Editor Path: 
Default Branch Option:  
Path Option: Cmd
SSH Option: OpenSSH
Tortoise Option: false
CURL Option: WinSSL
CRLF Option: CRLFAlways
Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY
Git Pull Behavior Option: Merge
Use Credential Manager: Enabled
Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled
Enable Symlinks: Enabled
Enable FSMonitor: Disabled

Other interesting things

No response

Terminal/shell

CMD

Commands that trigger the issue

git clone

Expected behaviour

The clone to finish

Actual behaviour

$ git clone user@ip_address:project.git
Cloning into 'dir'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 57873, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (57873/57873), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (32002/32002), done.
fatal: pack has bad object at offset 460179591: inflate returned 1
fatal: fetch-pack: invalid index-pack output

Repository

Internal repository 1.2GB

[dscho]

fatal: pack has bad object at offset 460179591: inflate returned 1

Would you have any chance to try cloning this via WSL (or regular Linux), just to exclude the possibility that this isn't a Windows-specific issue (or more concretely, a corrupted repository on the remote side)?

[dylan-car]

It works fine on Linux using git version 2.39.5

[dscho]

@dylan-car hmm. That points to a problem with too-large objects and/or packfiles. At the moment, Git for Windows is ill-prepared to deal with >4GB blobs/packfiles.

[dylan-car]

I found the offending >4GB file in git history; thank you. What would be the recommended remedy to this? Can I retroactively remove it from history?

[dscho]

I found the offending >4GB file in git history; thank you. What would be the recommended remedy to this? Can I retroactively remove it from history?

Unfortunately, removing it from the history won't fix the clone.

If the file isn't present at HEAD and you could try a shallow or partial clone, that might work around it.

[dylan-car]

Is git-filter an option?

[dscho]

Is git-filter an option?

You mean git filter-repo or git filter-branch? That would be possible, but if any clone exists already, it would be disruptive.

If you mean git clone --filter=..., that's the partial clone I talked about.