Fixing ‘fatal: early EOF’ and ‘index-pack failed’ Errors While Cloning Large GitHub Repositories

 

Fixing ‘fatal: early EOF’ and ‘index-pack failed’ Errors While Cloning Large GitHub Repositories

🧠 How to Clone and Work with Large Git Repositories Efficiently

Cloning large Git repositories can often run into issues — slow downloads, memory limits, incomplete history, or checkout problems. Recently, I had to work with a massive repository from Bitbucket. Since the regular `git clone` approach wasn’t feasible (due to size and timeouts), I took a different route. Here’s how I tackled it step-by-step.

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🗂️ Step-by-Step: Cloning a Large Git Repository from a Zip Download

🔽 Step 1: Download as a ZIP

If the repository is too large for `git clone` to succeed without errors, try downloading it as a `.zip` file from your Git provider’s web interface. This gives you a working directory without Git history.

🔧 Step 2: Initialize a New Git Repository

After extracting the zip:

git init

This creates a fresh `.git` folder and prepares the directory to act as a repository.

🌐 Step 3: Set Remote URL

Now, point it to the remote repository:

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:zudheer/large_repo.git
git remote -v # Optional: to verify

🧼 Step 4: Increase Git Buffer Size

Large repositories may require a higher buffer size to fetch objects:

git config - global http.postBuffer 524288000 # ~500MB

You can adjust this higher if needed.

⬇️ Step 5: Fetch Incrementally (Shallow Fetch)

To avoid downloading the full history at once, fetch with depth to reduce load:

git fetch - depth=5
git fetch - depth=10
git fetch - depth=20
git fetch - depth=30
git fetch - depth=50b

Eventually, you can go for a full fetch once shallow fetches are successful:

git fetch

This ensures all data is now available, without initial overload.

🔀 Step 6: Pull the Repository

git pull

Now your repository should be fully connected to the remote, with working history.

🌿 Step 7: Fetch All Branches

git fetch - all
git fetch origin "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*"

This ensures all remote branches are available locally.

🏷️ Step 8: List and Switch to Branches

git branch -r # List remote branches

If you want to switch to a specific branch like `dev`:

git checkout -b dev origin/dev

Or if the branch already exists:

git checkout dev

Then pull the latest changes:

git pull

✅ Summary

Here’s the full command history in order:

git init
git remote set-url origin git@github.com:zudheer/large_repo.git
git config - global http.postBuffer 524288000
git fetch - depth=5
git fetch - depth=10
git fetch - depth=20
git fetch - depth=30
git fetch - depth=50
git fetch
git pull
git fetch - all
git fetch origin "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*"
git branch -r
git checkout -b dev origin/dev
git pull

📝 Final Thoughts

Cloning a large repo doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Using a ZIP + shallow fetch hybrid method allows you to get started fast without overloading your bandwidth or Git client. This approach is especially helpful when dealing with limited network conditions, CI/CD constraints, or when Bitbucket/GitHub throttles large clone operations.

Have you faced similar issues cloning large repos? Let me know your strategy or improvements!