git push is stuck when pushing to remote

Question

When I try to push to a remote repository,

git push origin xyz

it gets stuck. I try ssh -T [email protected] and I get a success:

You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

When I use the verbose option, I get a message that it is pushing:

git push -v origin xyz

Pushing to [email protected]:repo.git

and it times out after about 10 minutes with another message:

Connection to github.com closed by remote host.

And I do not get the prompt back in the shell.

I have tried the following but to no avail:

• including the --dry-run switch with push results the same.
• git clean -d -f -i followd by git gc --auto

I am on macOS High Sierra and using SSH authentication.

Answer 1

It turned out it was stuck due to a pre-push commit hook which was placed there (at <repository-root>/.git/hooks/pre-push) by a third-party tool.

To debug, I ran the command with GIT_TRACE on:

$ GIT_TRACE=1 git push -v origin xyz
11:47:11.950226 git.c:340               trace: built-in: git 'push' '-v' 'origin' ‘xyz’
Pushing to [email protected]:repo.git
11:47:11.951795 run-command.c:626       trace: run_command: 'ssh' '[email protected]' 'git-receive-pack ‘\’’repo.git'\'''
11:47:13.100323 run-command.c:626       trace: run_command: '.git/hooks/pre-push' 'origin' '[email protected]'

Deleting the pre-push file solved the problem.