cloning gnulib with --depth=2 option hangning

[John W. Eaton]

When I execute

  git clone --depth=2 git://git.sv.gnu.org/gnulib

as is done when running the bootstrap script for the first time, the
git process hangs.  Several people have reported this problem when
building Octave from a Mercurial checkout, which does not start out
with a gnulib subdirectory but gets all the gnulib sources from
git.sv.gnu.org.  Does anyone else see this problem?  What could be
causing it?  I have git 1.7.2.3.

jwe