What is the output on screen you get?

Try running something you know won't error out and write to STDERR instead of STDOUT. For instance:

my $out = `ls`;
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...should NOT write to STDERR. If that works, but your original command doesn't, I'm pretty certain that something is happening that is writing to STDERR.

Try doing a git status with backticks and see what happens. Now move the test to a non-repo directory and compare the results (the latter will print to console, the former won't).

I tried this, and it doesn't work for 'git fetch --tags' for some reason.

My guess is that using this command produces some sort of 'active' output (for want of a better description) in the terminal, and it isn't a static output like you would get from backticks 'ls' or 'ps ax' etc.

Now for some reason, once you run 'git fetch --tags', any other time you run it, there is no output - I don't know how to reset it to test - but maybe try saving the command in a text file chmod 755 gitfetch.sh and then use

my $git = `.\gitfetch.sh`;
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BTW, using 'my $git = `git status`; works:

:~/git/claws/claws$ perl gittest 
What's here? --- On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    gittest

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to 
+track)
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Nick

OK, first I had to suss out git to clear tags so I could test:

git tag -d $(git tag)
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does it.

Now, as assumed, output goes somewhere else, so:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
my $git;

$git = `git fetch --tags 2>&1`;

print "What's here? --- $git\n";
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sorts it.

Nick