I am facing this issue and blocked on it

https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/issues/2399

Lein gives no details

@rnagpal did you modify the release steps of your project.clj? it's showing the raw git error message (subtly):

On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
nothing to commit, working tree clean

@rymndhng I did modify the release tasks, mostly to not sign the release. Here are the release tasks that I have

:release-tasks [["vcs" "assert-committed"]
                  ["change" "version" "leiningen.release/bump-version" "release"]
                  ["vcs" "commit"]
                  ["vcs" "tag" "--no-sign"]
                  ["deploy"]
                  ["change" "version" "leiningen.release/bump-version"]
                  ["vcs" "commit"]
                  ["vcs" "push"]]

My debugging advice is to run each of the release tasks one at a time by hand to see what it's doing and failing

lein vcs assert-commited
lein change version leiningen.release/bump-version release
lein vcs commit
...