Git clone error on Jenkins/Hudson on Windows

Recently I set up a new instance of Jenkins (formerly Hudson) running on my Windows 7 desktop computer. I tried to set up a job that would pull from a GitHub repository and do a build but (like every other time I've tried this) was foiled by the job simply hanging at the step where it tries to clone or fetch from GitHub. Cancelling the job leads to the following errors in the console output:

Started by user cgdecker
Checkout:workspace / E:\Colin\.hudson\jobs\temp\workspace - hudson.remoting.LocalChannel@692769e1
Using strategy: Default
Checkout:workspace / E:\Colin\.hudson\jobs\temp\workspace - hudson.remoting.LocalChannel@692769e1
GitAPI created
Cloning the remote Git repository
Cloning repository origin
$ git clone -o origin git@github.com:cgdecker/jdbc-persist.git E:\Colin\.hudson\jobs\temp\workspace
ERROR: Error cloning remote repo 'origin' : Could not clone git@github.com:cgdecker/jdbc-persist.git
ERROR: Cause: Error performing git clone -o origin git@github.com:cgdecker/jdbc-persist.git E:\Colin\.hudson\jobs\temp\workspace
null
Trying next repository
ERROR: Could not clone repository
FATAL: Could not clone
hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Could not clone
 at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$2.invoke(GitSCM.java:809)
 at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM$2.invoke(GitSCM.java:740)
 at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:756)
 at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:738)
 at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM.checkout(GitSCM.java:740)
 at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1171)
 at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.checkout(AbstractBuild.java:499)
 at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.run(AbstractBuild.java:415)
 at hudson.model.Run.run(Run.java:1362)
 at hudson.maven.MavenModuleSetBuild.run(MavenModuleSetBuild.java:405)
 at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
 at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:145)

First, I tried the usual suspects:

• Ensuring that Jenkins was running as the correct user.
• Ensuring that the user's .ssh directory and keys were in place and checked out.
• Trying the full path to git.exe in Git's bin directory rather than just using git as the path.

I did a search for the error, but as in the past it turned up no solutions that actually fixed the problem for me. I then tried running a job that just executed a Windows batch command to run git clone on the same repository... which worked fine!

The solution

Double-checking things, I noticed that my PATH contained two directories for my Git installation (msysgit): one for Git/bin and another for Git/cmd, which I hadn't been aware of before. Looking in Git/cmd, I noticed that it contained a file git.cmd which appeared to be some kind of script wrapping git.exe. So, I went into the Jenkins configuration and changed the path to the git executable to git.cmd. And that fixed everything!

Based on what I've seen when searching for this error, it seems like there are quite a few potential causes for it. But this is what worked for me in my situation and I haven't seen this solution elsewhere, so I thought I'd write it down... if nothing else to help me remember if it happens again.