For GitHub clones, this will do:

export https_proxy=http://newman.ultralight.org:3128
export http_proxy=http://newman.ultralight.org:3128

But to commit back, I had to edit the file $REPO/.git/config and add my username to the following line :

        url = https://samircury@github.com/samircury/CMSSW-benchmarks.git

Which didn't have it before. Also, after git push origin master I got :

-bash-4.1$ git push origin master
Password: 
Counting objects: 10, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.
error: RPC failed; result=22, HTTP code = 0
Writing objects: 100% (8/8), 3.53 MiB, done.
Total 8 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)

Then found here

That a workaround is to increase the HTTP buffer :

git config http.postBuffer 524288000

There is probably a better way to do both things, but these work for me now. Feel free to update with the better ways.

-- Main.samir - 2014-08-26