Issue

I tried to setup the engine multiple times on macOS, and I've faced an error similar to the following one after running gclient sync:

fatal: early EOF
fatal: the remote end hung up unexpectedly
fatal: index-pack failed
error: RPC failed; curl 18 transfer closed with outstanding read data remaining
exit code: 128

I am not sure what is the cause of the error but they seem to be related to git configs and networking. I am not using a vpn or proxy and my internet connection is decent (so maybe something else I am not aware of). The error kept occurring in the step of cloning sources of flutter and others.

Solutions

❌ (didn't work): some SO answers suggested increase some limits such as packSizeLimit (link), or use configure git to use HTTP/1.1 (link), but none of that worked.

✅ (worked): I ended up passing --no-history flag for the build to complete -- i.e.:

gclient sync --no-history

--shallow is another flag available in gclient but I don't know the difference between them.

Proposal

It would've been helpful if there was a note at the gclient sync step in the engine setup wiki informing the developer about the possibility of such issue(s) and how to overcome them plus at what cost (fast, less size but with no history, etc.).

Additional Info

The main pain point was that the error would only appears after 30+ minutes from running gclient sync. So for every workaround I tried, I had to wait 30+ minutes before knowing if it was going to work or not (so it took quite few hours to set up the engine build).

Here are some example of similar issues faced by others in the past:

• gclient sync for building engine fails #14545
• flutter update-packages stuck #66874
• gclient sync : src/third_party/glfw (ERROR) #34400