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gitdir

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#2,157 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
42/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
csharp, git

Research direction

Start with the Worktree API and compare it with Repository.Info.WorkingDirectory. Trace how .git/worktrees//gitdir identifies the checkout path, then verify the new property returns the actual worktree directory such as C:\repo-core. Done means consumers no longer need to read and resolve the gitdir file themselves.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem Description

The Worktree API in LibGit2Sharp does not expose any property to retrieve the actual working directory path associated with a worktree (i.e., the folder where the code is checked out).

Currently, the Worktree object only provides:

  • Name → the name of the worktree (e.g., "core")
  • GitDirectory → the path .git/worktrees/<name>, which does not correspond to the working directory

Due to this limitation, consumers must manually:

  1. Read the content of .git/worktrees/<name>/gitdir
  2. Use Directory.GetParent() to resolve the real worktree folder path

This approach is both fragile and undocumented.

Expected Behavior

Expose a property like Worktree.WorkingDirectory (similar to Repository.Info.WorkingDirectory) that returns the actual working directory path of the worktree (e.g., C:\repo-core).

Example Workaround
var worktreePaths = new List<string>();
var gitDir = Path.Combine(repoPath, ".git", "worktrees");

foreach (var folder in Directory.GetDirectories(gitDir))
{
    var gitdirFile = Path.Combine(folder, "gitdir");
    if (File.Exists(gitdirFile))
    {
        var gitdirPath = File.ReadAllText(gitdirFile).Trim();
        var worktreePath = Directory.GetParent(gitdirPath)?.FullName;
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(worktreePath))
            worktreePaths.Add(worktreePath);
    }
}

This code reads the .git/worktrees/<name>/gitdir file and manually resolves the worktree’s root folder. A native API would make this more reliable and developer-friendly.

Dominant language
C#
Stars
3.5k
Forks
925
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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