I was crafting a post-checkout hook and wanted to do something depending on the absolute path of $GIT_WORK_TREE in the current environment. In git 2.7.4 (and up to 2.4.14) at least, that environment variable was set to “.” when inside the post-checkout hook, which was a little unhelpful in this case. So I spent some time trying to google why and coming up empty.
Here’s where you’re entitled to laugh at my over-thinking this.
Since I’m in the work tree already (.) when inside the hook, the absolute path is the current working directory, or $PWD. No need to fiddle with GIT_WORK_TREE at all.