Introduction

A git svn clone failure with a "malformed index info" message usually means git svn received repository data that it could not translate cleanly into Git's index format. In practice, this is often caused by problematic pathnames, repository inconsistencies, or a partially broken import state after an interrupted fetch. The error message is low-level, so the right response is to narrow the failing revision and inspect the SVN content around it instead of retrying blindly.

What git svn Is Doing Internally

git svn imports SVN revisions and synthesizes Git commits from them. To do that, it has to build Git trees and index records for each imported revision.

If one revision contains something git svn cannot map correctly, the import stops. The message points at the Git index layer, but the real cause is often upstream in the SVN history being imported.

Common Causes

The most common patterns are:

• a problematic filename or path in SVN history
• an interrupted or corrupted local git svn state
• repository data that imports cleanly in SVN tools but not through git svn
• a very large history where the failure occurs only at a specific revision

That is why the first useful question is not "how do I suppress the error" but "which revision introduces it."

Narrow Down the Failing Revision

Instead of cloning the entire repository repeatedly, clone or fetch smaller revision ranges.

git svn clone -r 1:1000 https://svn.example.com/repo project-import

If that works, move forward.

git svn clone -r 1001:2000 https://svn.example.com/repo project-import

Or, after an initial clone, fetch incrementally:

cd project-import
git svn fetch -r 1001:1100

This binary-search style approach helps identify the exact revision that breaks the import.

Inspect the SVN Revision Directly

Once you know the failing revision range, inspect it with SVN commands.

svn log -r 1057 https://svn.example.com/repo
svn ls -R https://svn.example.com/repo@1057
svn diff -c 1057 https://svn.example.com/repo

You are looking for unusual paths, renamed files, odd metadata, or repository content that may be accepted by SVN but imported badly into Git.

If the repository has unusual path encoding or legacy file names, that is often where the issue surfaces.

Clear Broken Local State Before Retrying

If the import was interrupted, a half-built local state can make retries noisy and misleading. It is often safer to remove the failed import directory and retry cleanly after you understand the failing revision.

rm -rf project-import

Then rerun the narrowed import with tracing enabled:

GIT_TRACE=1 git svn clone -r 1050:1060 https://svn.example.com/repo project-import

Tracing does not always give a perfect explanation, but it can confirm where the import stopped.

Practical Recovery Strategy

A good workflow is:

1. identify the failing revision range
2. inspect the SVN history and paths in that range
3. retry from a clean local clone state
4. continue incrementally instead of doing full-history retries

If the repository contains path or history anomalies that git svn cannot handle, you may need to clean them in SVN first or switch to a different migration strategy rather than forcing git svn through the broken revision.

Common Pitfalls

• Re-running the full clone over and over without narrowing the failing revision.
• Assuming the Git index is corrupted locally when the real problem is a specific SVN revision.
• Keeping a half-failed git svn working directory and trusting later retries from it.
• Ignoring unusual filenames or path history in the SVN repository.
• Treating the error as purely a Git issue instead of an SVN-to-Git translation issue.

Summary

• "Malformed index info" during git svn clone usually points to a specific problematic imported revision.
• Narrow the failure by cloning or fetching smaller revision ranges.
• Inspect the failing SVN revision directly with svn log, svn ls, and svn diff.
• Retry from a clean local state instead of stacking retries on a broken import.
• Focus on the offending SVN history entry, not just the low-level Git error text.