Spack initialization issues on RHEL 7 #51615
Description
Running Spack on RHEL 7 is reportedly broken:
$ git clone --depth=2 https://github.com/spack/spack.git
$ . spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh
$ spack install zlib-ng
usage: git ls-remote [--heads] [--tags] [-u <exec> | --upload-pack <exec>]
[-q|--quiet] [--exit-code] [--get-url] [<repository> [<refs>...]]
==> Warning: Error constructing repository '/home/user/.spack/package_repos/fncqgg4': Failed to clone repository builtin
Every command afterwards fails because the package repo is not initialized properly.
Looks like we're using git ls-remote in a way that's not supported by for git 1.8.3.1, which is the default on RHEL 7.
Likely related to refs = git("ls-remote", "--symref", remote, "HEAD", output=str) in spack/lib/spack/spack/repo.py.