can't redirect git's progress output (stderr)

[Delan Azabani <delan@azabani.com>]

Hi all,

I'm writing a URI handler for git that uses bash/zenity to allow the
user to clone a git repository when a git:// link is clicked in a browser.

I'm having a bit of trouble getting git's output into zenity, however.
git outputs its progress messages (everything except the "Initializing"
message) on stderr, which shouldn't be a problem. Something weird has
happened though; the moment I try to pipe git's stderr to stdout or a
file, it disappears.

A simple way to test this:

git clone git://your.favourite/git/repo 2> file1
git clone git://your.favourite/git/repo 2>&1 > file2

file1 will be empty (why?) and file2 will contain only the
"Initializing" message, which came from stdout.

TL;DR why can't I pipe git's stderr output?

Help would be greatly appreciated; thanks in advance.