There are some malformed tags in the mailutils repo which should be cleaned up - see:
$ git fsck --strict Checking ref database: 100% (1/1), done. Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done. error in tag db3f12f432913395f01d3fbf21ddde61c3aa4ad8: missingEmail: invalid author/committer line - missing email error in tag 4e6d75a11fbad017ddf58f6c8052ac63e6dd4bf9: missingEmail: invalid author/committer line - missing email error in tag 46cdd27e51cd0275665536a8952420fae28eff70: missingEmail: invalid author/committer line - missing email error in tag 77dfb64e904e8d40215f9a51e433aedf0c3e18d1: missingEmail: invalid author/committer line - missing email This prevents cloning with transfer.fsckobjects=true: $ git clone --config transfer.fsckobjects=true git://git.git.savannah.gnu.org/mailutils.git Cloning into 'mailutils'... remote: Enumerating objects: 90012, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (90012/90012), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (15471/15471), done. error: object db3f12f432913395f01d3fbf21ddde61c3aa4ad8: missingEmail: invalid author/committer line - missing email fatal: fsck error in packed object fatal: fetch-pack: invalid index-pack output See also Debian bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1093377
