suddenly no content in repos

[MarcWort]

Hi,

Something broke our setup between between a0f5789 (working good) and cd59bed (bad).

We use indexserver like this for our self hosted Gitlab instances:

"zoekt-indexserver",
"-git_index_flags", "-branches=production,master,main,development,develop,integration,HEAD -delta -delta_threshold=150 -allow_missing_branches -disable_ctags -require_ctags=false -submodules=false -max_trigram_count=80000", 
"-data_dir", "/data/gitlab-indexer",
"-index_dir", "/data/index/",
"-mirror_config", "/config.json",
"-mirror_duration", "30m",
"-fetch_interval", "5m",  

setting config.json to [{"GitLabURL":"https://gitlab.XXX.com/api/v4/"}]

The only non-ok output I saw was this line for many repositories:

zoekt-0 zoekt-provid-indexer ERR: 2026/03/30 12:33:23 delta build: falling back to normal build since delta build failed, repository="gitlab.XXX.com/provid/apps/nextcloud", err=getting last current commit for branch "production": reference not found

Please note that we do not have a production branch on this specific repository but on other. I did not see these messages earlier.

Using search query: r: many repos with 0 Bytes and 0 Files show up.

[linear]

CU-2690

[keegancsmith]

Can you try setting this environment variable ZOEKT_DISABLE_CATFILE_BATCH=true.

The commits that happened between your working good and bad seem very unlikely to cause the issue you saw. Is it possible your "good" commit was based on the PR for that which was based on a much older commit to main?

[MarcWort]

Hi @keegancsmith ,
thank you for your quick reply.

Can you try setting this environment variable ZOEKT_DISABLE_CATFILE_BATCH=true.

Yes, it solves the problem. I added to env at 09:12 and immediately changed repos have content again.

Is it possible your "good" commit was based on the PR for that which was based on a much older commit to main?

No. we are using Renovate to always update to latest commit from main:

git log --oneline
7a3a62ea (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) gitindex: speed up tests (#1031)
7d3b9db1 gitindex: handle bare repos in plainOpenRepo (#1030)
cd59bed0 indexserver: set blob:limit based on FileLimit (#1027) <------- Bad
ddbde8b3 gitindex: set filter for cat-file (#1026)
5fbc1676 search: use structured logging for crashed shards (#1028)
a0f5789d Handle git indexing path correctly for Git worktrees (#1025) <------ Good

[keegancsmith]

@MarcWort what version of git are you running? Do you mind trying to run "git test ./..." to see if they pass in your env? When things are broken can you find any output that we can use to try work out why everything was empty? Mind trying to manually run zoekt-git-index to see what it says?

I'd really appreciate all of that since I'm not sure why you end up with empty files. I would like to keep cat-file as the default experience since it is more efficient.

cc @clemlesne

[MarcWort]

what version of git are you running?

We running zoekt in kubernetes based on debian 12:

root@zoekt-1:/# git --version
git version 2.39.5
root@zoekt-1:/# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Dockerfile:

FROM gitlab.xxx.com/container-images/debian:bookworm-20260329T202916Z@sha256:997fff17cbdd8c0430111a9958ffb5c5d143638edb3f5e4afe25083ab241833b
RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y install universal-ctags git tini
COPY ./tmp/bin/zoekt-* /usr/local/bin
COPY ./indexer-entrypoint.sh /

with this indexer-entrypoint.sh:

echo "${GITLAB_TOKEN}" >/root/.gitlab-token
echo "machine ${GITLAB_FQDN} login oauth password ${GITLAB_TOKEN}" >/root/.netrc
exec tini -- "$@"

The zoekt binaries are built like this:

curl https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/archive/7d3b9db1aaf2181be398959d0da3061bdfa64d18.tar.gz
# extract and stuff
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -o ../bin/ ./cmd/zoekt-{git-index,index,indexserver,mirror-gitlab,webserver}

Do you mind trying to run "git test ./..." to see if they pass in your env?

Sure and it seems promising. You can reproduce it yourself on Debian 12

ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-archive-index	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-dynamic-indexserver	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-git-clone	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-git-index	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-index	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-indexserver	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-merge-index	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-bitbucket-server	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-gerrit	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-gitea	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-github	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-gitiles	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-mirror-gitlab	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-repo-index	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-sourcegraph-indexserver	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-sourcegraph-indexserver/grpc/protos/sourcegraph/zoekt/configuration/v1	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-sourcegraph-indexserver/grpc/protos/zoekt/indexserver/v1	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-test	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-webserver	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/cmd/zoekt-webserver/grpc/server	(cached)
--- FAIL: TestIndexGitRepo_BareRepo_LegacyRepoOpen (0.06s)
    index_test.go:263: IndexGitRepo(bare, legacy open): cat-file next for file1.go: EOF
--- FAIL: TestLatestCommit (0.08s)
    tree_test.go:665: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for afile: EOF
--- FAIL: TestCatfileReader_Excluded (0.03s)
    catfile_test.go:263: Next large.bin: EOF
--- FAIL: TestIndexTinyRepo (0.05s)
    index_test.go:119: unexpected error cat-file next for file1.go: EOF
--- FAIL: TestFullAndShortRefNames (0.05s)
    tree_test.go:611: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for afile: EOF
--- FAIL: TestIndexGitRepo_Worktree (0.07s)
    index_test.go:156: IndexGitRepo(worktree): cat-file next for file1.go: EOF
--- FAIL: TestBranchWildcard (0.05s)
    tree_test.go:528: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for afile: EOF
--- FAIL: TestSearchSymlinkByContent (0.05s)
    tree_test.go:397: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for adir/afile: EOF
--- FAIL: TestIgnore (0.07s)
    ignore_test.go:78: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .sourcegraph/ignore: EOF
--- FAIL: TestSubmoduleIndexWithoutRepocache (0.16s)
    tree_test.go:291: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .gitmodules: EOF
--- FAIL: TestAllowMissingBranch (0.20s)
    tree_test.go:461: IndexGitRepo(nonexist, allow): cat-file next for .gitmodules: EOF
--- FAIL: TestSkipSubmodules (0.20s)
    tree_test.go:578: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .gitmodules: EOF
--- FAIL: TestSubmoduleIndex (0.16s)
    tree_test.go:225: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .gitmodules: EOF
--- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic (0.00s)
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification (0.11s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification/setup (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification/add_newer_version_of_fruits (0.05s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_no_prior_shards_exist (0.13s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_no_prior_shards_exist/attempt_delta_build_on_a_repository_that_hasn't_been_indexed_yet (0.12s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for hello_world.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_repository_has_unsupported_Sourcegraph_ignore_file (0.14s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_repository_has_unsupported_Sourcegraph_ignore_file/setup (0.11s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .sourcegraph/ignore: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_repository_has_unsupported_Sourcegraph_ignore_file/attempt_delta_build_after_modifying_ignore_file (0.02s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for .sourcegraph/ignore: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_expand_branches_correctly_when_using_wildcards_in_branch_names (0.13s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_expand_branches_correctly_when_using_wildcards_in_branch_names/setup (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_expand_branches_correctly_when_using_wildcards_in_branch_names/try_delta_build_with_wildcard_in_branches (0.06s)
            index_test.go:993: diff in received documents (-want +got):  []index.Document(
                - 	{
                - 		{Name: "best_fruit.txt", Content: []uint8("grapes")},
                - 		{Name: "best_fruit.txt", Content: []uint8("strawberry")},
                - 	},
                + 	nil,
                  )
                
                :
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/deletion (0.12s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/deletion/setup (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/deletion/delete_foo_file (0.05s)
            index_test.go:993: diff in received documents (-want +got):  []index.Document(
                - 	{
                - 		{Name: "best_fruit.txt", Content: []uint8("strawberry")},
                - 		{Name: "hello_world.txt", Content: []uint8("hello")},
                - 	},
                + 	nil,
                  )
                
                :
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_successfully_perform_multiple_delta_builds_after_disabling_symbols (0.23s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_successfully_perform_multiple_delta_builds_after_disabling_symbols/setup (0.10s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_successfully_perform_multiple_delta_builds_after_disabling_symbols/try_delta_build_after_updating_Disable_CTags_index_option (0.08s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_successfully_perform_multiple_delta_builds_after_disabling_symbols/try_another_delta_build_while_CTags_is_still_disabled (0.03s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_a_full,_normal_build_if_the_repository_has_more_than_the_specified_threshold_of_shards (0.26s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_a_full,_normal_build_if_the_repository_has_more_than_the_specified_threshold_of_shards/setup:_first_shard (0.11s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for foo.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_a_full,_normal_build_if_the_repository_has_more_than_the_specified_threshold_of_shards/setup:_second_shard_(delta) (0.02s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_a_full,_normal_build_if_the_repository_has_more_than_the_specified_threshold_of_shards/setup:_third_shard_(delta) (0.07s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for hello_world.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_a_full,_normal_build_if_the_repository_has_more_than_the_specified_threshold_of_shards/attempt_another_delta_build_after_we_already_blew_past_the_shard_threshold (0.04s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for the_best/best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition (0.14s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition/setup (0.10s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition/add_new_file_-_foo (0.03s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for foo.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/rename (0.15s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/rename/setup (0.11s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/rename/rename_fruits_file_on_'main'_+_ensure_that_unmodified_fruits_file_on_'release'_is_still_searchable (0.02s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification_only_inside_nested_folder (0.12s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification_only_inside_nested_folder/setup (0.07s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for foo.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification_only_inside_nested_folder/add_newer_version_of_fruits_inside_folder (0.03s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for the_best/best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification:_update_one_branch_with_version_of_document_from_another_branch_(a.k.a._Keegan's_test) (0.18s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification:_update_one_branch_with_version_of_document_from_another_branch_(a.k.a._Keegan's_test)/setup (0.08s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/modification:_update_one_branch_with_version_of_document_from_another_branch_(a.k.a._Keegan's_test)/switch_main_to_dev's_older_version_of_fruits_+_bump_dev's_fruits_to_new_version (0.08s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/no-op_delta_builds_(reindexing_the_same_commits) (0.18s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/no-op_delta_builds_(reindexing_the_same_commits)/setup (0.09s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/no-op_delta_builds_(reindexing_the_same_commits)/first_no-op_(normal_build_->_delta_build) (0.04s)
            index_test.go:993: diff in received documents (-want +got):  []index.Document(
                - 	{
                - 		{Name: "best_fruit.txt", Content: []uint8("strawberry")},
                - 		{Name: "foo.txt", Content: []uint8("bar")},
                - 		{Name: "hello_world.txt", Content: []uint8("hello")},
                - 	},
                + 	nil,
                  )
                
                :
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/no-op_delta_builds_(reindexing_the_same_commits)/second_no-op_(delta_build_->_delta_build) (0.03s)
            index_test.go:993: diff in received documents (-want +got):  []index.Document(
                - 	{
                - 		{Name: "best_fruit.txt", Content: []uint8("strawberry")},
                - 		{Name: "foo.txt", Content: []uint8("bar")},
                - 		{Name: "hello_world.txt", Content: []uint8("hello")},
                - 	},
                + 	nil,
                  )
                
                :
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_one_or_more_index_options_updates_requires_a_full_build (0.24s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_one_or_more_index_options_updates_requires_a_full_build/setup (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_one_or_more_index_options_updates_requires_a_full_build/try_delta_build_after_updating_Disable_CTags_index_option (0.11s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_one_or_more_index_options_updates_requires_a_full_build/try_delta_build_after_reverting_Disable_CTags_index_option (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition_and_deletion_on_only_one_branch (0.20s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition_and_deletion_on_only_one_branch/setup (0.12s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/addition_and_deletion_on_only_one_branch/replace_fruits_v3_with_v4_on_'dev',_delete_fruits_on_'main' (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
    --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_the_set_of_requested_repository_branches_changes (0.22s)
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_the_set_of_requested_repository_branches_changes/setup (0.13s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
        --- FAIL: TestIndexDeltaBasic/should_fallback_to_normal_build_if_the_set_of_requested_repository_branches_changes/try_delta_build_after_dropping_'main'_branch_from_index_ (0.06s)
            index_test.go:930: IndexGitRepo: cat-file next for best_fruit.txt: EOF
FAIL
FAIL	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/gitindex	0.585s
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/chunk	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/defaults	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/grpcutil	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/internalerrs	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/messagesize	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/propagator	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/protos/zoekt/webserver/v1	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/grpc/testprotos/news/v1	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/ignore	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/index	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/archive	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/ctags	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/debugserver	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/e2e	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/hybridre2	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/json	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/mockSearcher	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/otlpenv	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/profiler	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/syntaxutil	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tenant	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tenant/internal/enforcement	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tenant/internal/tenanttype	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tenant/systemtenant	(cached)
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tenant/tenanttest	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/trace	[no test files]
?   	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/internal/tracer	[no test files]
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/languages	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/query	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/search	(cached)
ok  	github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt/web	(cached)
FAIL

It also fails with debian 13 with git version 2.47.3.

[clemlesne]

Investigation

It looks like the root cause is PR #1026 (ddbde8b3), which introduced --filter=blob:limit=<size> to git cat-file --batch. This flag was added to git itself by Patrick Steinhardt, merged on 2025-04-16 (a271b05, eb83e4c) and first shipped in git 2.50.0 (2025-06-16).

When an older git receives the unrecognized --filter flag, it seems to exit immediately. The stdout pipe closes before any data is written, and every subsequent Next() call hits EOF — which would explain the "cat-file next for <filename>: EOF" errors across the board.

Git version	--filter support	Where
2.39.5	No	Debian 12 — branched from a release made in June 2022
2.47.3	No	Debian 13
2.50.0+	Yes	First version with the feature

Implementation references:

• Zoekt PR: gitindex: set filter for cat-file #1026
• Git merge: a271b05 — "git cat-file --batch" and friends learned to allow "--filter=" to omit certain objects
• Git 2.50.0 release notes: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/RelNotes/2.50.0.adoc

Why CI didn't catch it

Our test matrix runs on GitHub Actions (ubuntu-latest) inside an alpine:edge container, which ships git 2.53+. So we likely have no coverage for older git versions at the moment.

On the git version

@MarcWort — it's worth noting that Debian 12's git 2.39.5 is nearly a year behind the feature introduced here, and even Debian 13's 2.47.3 predates it by six months. If you control the Dockerfile, installing a more recent git (e.g. from the official PPA or from source) could get you 2.50+ and the filter optimization would actually kick in. That said, this probably shouldn't be a hard requirement — see below.

Proposed fix

We could gate the --filter flag behind a git version check (>= 2.50.0) and degrade gracefully: older git would skip the server-side blob filtering and fall back to the existing size check in Go. No data loss, just slightly more I/O on partial clones.

ZOEKT_DISABLE_CATFILE_BATCH=true remains a valid workaround in the meantime.

[keegancsmith]

Great find, so it was my commit 😬

I think the more "correct" solution if they are on an older git is to fallback to the go-git code path. Otherwise on sparse clones you end up fetching all blobs.

[MarcWort]

Thank you both for your help.
I have upgraded to Git version 2.53.0, and everything now works fine without ZOEKT_DISABLE_CATFILE_BATCH=true.

Of course, an automatic fallback to go-git would be preferable. It would also be useful to include a note on the minimum required Git version to use all the optimizations/features in the README.md.

I would also appreciate an 'official' Docker image with prebuilt binaries and the necessary dependencies, but I guess this isn't your scope :).

Anyway for me this Issue could be closed.

[keegancsmith]

Automatic fallback will hopefully be solved by #1037

For now we have actually ZOEKT_DISABLE_CATFILE_BATCH=true by default after noticing very large memory usage in our production clusters: #1038

Filed #1040 about the docker images.

Glad we could resolve your issue.