I played with libgit2 and came around this error and debugged it a bit. In the end cmake found an ancient zlib header and lib burried in %PATH%.

Here is a record of my findings in hope it may help.

ERROR:

Call to git_status_list_new() fails.

Message from git_reference_peel(): "the reference 'refs/heads/master' cannot be peeled - Cannot retrieve reference target"

ISSUE:

Primary error message overwritten:
Message from inflate_disk_obj(): "failed to inflate disk object"

CAUSED BY:

start_inflate(): inflateInit() returns 661 (?), inflate() then -6 (Z_VERSION_ERROR)

CAUSED BY:

cmake ..
-- Found ZLIB: C:/gnuwin32/lib/zlib.lib (found version "1.2.3")

QUICK FIX:

Disable package searching in CMakeLists.txt:

#FIND_PACKAGE(ZLIB)
#IF (ZLIB_FOUND)
# INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(${ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIRS})
# LINK_LIBRARIES(${ZLIB_LIBRARIES})
# IF(APPLE OR CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME MATCHES "FreeBSD")
# LIST(APPEND LIBGIT2_PC_LIBS "-lz")
# ELSE()
# SET(LIBGIT2_PC_REQUIRES "${LIBGIT2_PC_REQUIRES} zlib")
# ENDIF()
#ELSE()
MESSAGE(STATUS "zlib was not found; using bundled 3rd-party sources." )
INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(deps/zlib)
ADD_DEFINITIONS(-DNO_VIZ -DSTDC -DNO_GZIP)
FILE(GLOB SRC_ZLIB deps/zlib/*.c deps/zlib/*.h)
#ENDIF()

SUGGESTED FIX:

Add cmake option to disable package searching.