Check if current directory is a Git repository

Question

Copied from the bash completion file, the following is a naive way to do it

# Copyright (C) 2006,2007 Shawn O. Pearce <[email protected]>
# Conceptually based on gitcompletion (http://gitweb.hawaga.org.uk/).
# Distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.0.

if [ -d .git ]; then
  echo .git;
else
  git rev-parse --git-dir 2> /dev/null;
fi;

You could either wrap that in a function or use it in a script.

Condensed into a one line condition suitable for bash and zsh

[ -d .git ] && echo .git || git rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1

You can use:

git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree

Which will print 'true' if you are in a git repos working tree.

Note that it still returns output to STDERR if you are outside of a git repo (and does not print 'false').

Taken from this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2044714/12983

Use git rev-parse --git-dir

if git rev-parse --git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then
  : # This is a valid git repository (but the current working
    # directory may not be the top level.
    # Check the output of the git rev-parse command if you care)
else
  : # this is not a git repository
fi

edit: git-rev-parse now (as of 1.7.0) supports --show-toplevel, so you could do if test "$(pwd)" = "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)" to determine if the current directory is the top-level dir.

Or you could do this:

inside_git_repo="$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree 2>/dev/null)"

if [ "$inside_git_repo" ]; then
  echo "inside git repo"
else
  echo "not in git repo"
fi

Based on @Alex Cory's answer:

[ "$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree 2>/dev/null)" = "true" ]

doesn't contain any redundant operations and works in -e mode.

• As @go2null noted, this will not work in a bare repo. If you want to work with a bare repo for whatever reason, you can just check for git rev-parse succeeding, ignoring its output.
  • I don't consider this a drawback because the above line is indended for scripting, and virtually all git commands are only valid inside a worktree. So for scripting purposes, you're most likely interested in being not just inside a "git repo" but inside a worktree.

Not sure if there is a publicly accessible/documented way to do this (there are some internal git functions which you can use/abuse in the git source itself)

You could do something like;

if ! git ls-files >& /dev/null; then
  echo "not in git"
fi