How to fix fatal: this operation must be run in a work tree in Git

The most common cause is accidentally navigating into the .git folder. Check your current location:

pwd

If the path ends in .git, simply move up one directory:

cd ..
git status

Now Git commands should work normally.

Check if you're in a bare repository by looking for a working tree:

git rev-parse --is-bare-repository

If this returns true, you're in a bare repository. Also check:

ls -la

A bare repository will contain folders like objects/, refs/, and files like HEAD and config directly, without a .git subdirectory or any source code files.

If you need a working copy of a bare repository, clone it:

# If the bare repo is local
git clone /path/to/bare-repo.git my-working-copy
cd my-working-copy

# If it's a remote bare repo
git clone git@server:/path/to/repo.git my-working-copy
cd my-working-copy

This creates a normal repository with a working tree where you can edit files and run all Git commands.

If an existing repository suddenly shows this error, check if core.bare was accidentally set to true:

git config --get core.bare

If it returns true but this is supposed to be a normal repository with source files, fix it:

git config --unset core.bare

Or manually edit .git/config and remove or change the bare = true line under [core].

If you need to run a single command against a bare repository with an external working tree, use the --work-tree option:

# Run status using a separate work tree
git --work-tree=/path/to/files status

# Checkout files to a specific directory
git --work-tree=/var/www/html checkout master

You can also use environment variables:

GIT_WORK_TREE=/path/to/files git status

If you want to permanently associate a work tree with a bare repository (common for deployment setups):

git config core.worktree /path/to/working/directory
git config core.bare false

This is useful for "push to deploy" setups where you push to a bare repository that automatically checks out to a web directory.

Example post-receive hook for deployment:

#!/bin/bash
GIT_WORK_TREE=/var/www/mysite git checkout -f

Environment variables can override Git's repository detection. Check if any are set:

echo $GIT_DIR
echo $GIT_WORK_TREE

If these are set incorrectly, unset them:

unset GIT_DIR
unset GIT_WORK_TREE

Or for a single command:

env -u GIT_DIR -u GIT_WORK_TREE git status

If you want to convert an existing bare repository to a normal working repository:

# Create a directory for the working files
mkdir -p /path/to/repo-normal
cd /path/to/repo-normal

# Move the bare repo contents into a .git directory
mkdir .git
mv /path/to/bare-repo/* .git/

# Configure as non-bare and checkout
git config core.bare false
git checkout master

Alternatively, simply clone the bare repository to create a working copy:

git clone /path/to/bare-repo.git /path/to/working-repo