Compatibility issues between git 1.8 client and older git server

Question

I'm using a remote git hosting service (Svnrepository.com). I'm able to access the git repositories successfully while using a git 1.7.x as the client, but as soon as I upgrade the client to git 1.8.x, I am no longer able to push: the push hangs. The hosting service's support claims that this is because they are using an older git server that does not support version 1.8.

1. How do I use git 1.8 as a client, with an older git server?
2. Is there a workaround?
3. Does anyone know what the exact incompatibility is?
4. Does the statement from the support even sound plausible? For some reason I had thought that git had excellent backward/forward compatibility and there was no reason to fear that upgrading would break git
5. Is there some known incompatibility introduced in the 1.7->1.8 transition that would cause this?

By request, here is a trace with GIT_TRACE=1. It looks like it hangs while running git-http-push:

$ GIT_TRACE=1 git push -v
trace: built-in: git 'push' '-v'
Pushing to https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/
trace: run_command: 'git-remote-https' 'origin' 'https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/'
trace: run_command: 'http-push' '--helper-status' '--verbose' 'https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/' 'refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master'
trace: exec: 'git' 'http-push' '--helper-status' '--verbose' 'https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/' 'refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master'
trace: exec: 'git-http-push' '--helper-status' '--verbose' 'https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/' 'refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master'
trace: run_command: 'git-http-push' '--helper-status' '--verbose' 'https://secure2.svnrepository.com/redacted/redacted/' 'refs/heads/master:refs/heads/master'

It hangs after the last line of output. (If you prefer, you can also look at a trace where I've set both GIT_TRACE=1 and GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1.)

Answer 1

Wanting to run with a more up to date version of git is understandable, but if you host of choice doesn't run a current version, why don't you switch hosts? From the name alone, Svnrepository.com, doesn't sound like they focus on Git hosting. If the hosting service isn't something you can change, what about installing git1.7 somewhere outside your path and 1.8 normally. Then you could link the 1.7 version to something like oldgit and when you need to work with Svnrepostiory.com your commands would be like oldgit add, oldgit commit, oldgit push.

Answer 2

Svnrepository.com page says 'Standard features: Git over SSH' and it seems that you are accessing over http: which is probably good for read-only access. If you look at the text file .git/config you should see a section [remote "origin"] and the 'url' value can be set to the format host:/path/on/remote/machine which implies an SSH connection for Git