Is it possible to have the git repo _above_ the vault directory?

[tophee]

I am using Obsidian together with Noteplan, which means my Calendar-Notes are not in a subfolder of the vault (but in a sibling folder). To solve this, I have a symlink to that calendar folder. It works find with Obsidian (and Noteplan), but since git doesn't traverse symlinks, it will not see my calendar notes if I use the default config of the Obsidian Git plugin. Instead, I need to create my local repo in the parent folder of the Obsidian Vault folder. No problem for git at all, but I wonder whether this is or can be made compatible with the Obsidian Git plugin.

Here is my (basic) folder structure of my

MyRepo/     <--- this is where my .git lives 
├── Calendar/
├── MyVault/     <--- this is my Obsidian vault root folder
│   ├── Projectnotes/   
│   └── Templates/  
└── Another_folder/

I see the Custom base path setting, but it seems to be applicable only for the opposite use case (where the Git repo is below (not above) the vault directory, right?

[tophee]

Turns out I might have been taking the thing about

which is only required if the Git repository is below the vault root directory.
too serious.

I went ahead and tried setting Custom base path to ../ and it seems to work. :-)

[Vinzent03]

It should work just fine without that setting as well.

[xloggr]

@tophee Lucky you - I've been trying to get a very similar setup working, but haven't had much luck so far.

I’m using a regular Git repo with a doc/ folder inside it, which I open as my Obsidian vault. I was excited to try the Git plugin (v2.34.0), but ran into issues right away:

1. Out of the box, the plugin didn't detect the repo, showing the message: "Can't find a valid Git repo."
2. I tried setting Custom base path to ../ (like you did), but it didn’t seem to have any effect.
3. Setting Custom Git directory path to ../.git did help the plugin find the repo - but then it went haywire, treating all files as deleted or modified. I figured this was due to it not running from the working tree root, so I added GIT_WORK_TREE=../ under Additional environment variables, but that didn’t help either. From what I saw in the source code, it looks like the plugin might be ignoring that variable.

I've tried a few other combinations, but none of them really worked. Eventually I gave up and switched to managing Git outside the plugin - but I'd love to get it working the intended way.

I seem to be missing something subtle... @Vinzent03 maybe you have any advice?

[xloggr]

I did a bit more digging and finally pinpointed the issue - it comes down to symlinks.

First off, I can confirm that having an Obsidian vault inside a Git repo works just fine on my system (Ubuntu 24.04). Should've tested that earlier ;)

The catch is my slightly unconventional setup. I maintain several Git repositories, each with a doc/ subfolder that I use as the root for an Obsidian vault. The problem is that Obsidian insists on naming the vault after the directory it resides in, so I end up with multiple indistinguishable "doc" entries in the vault manager. To illustrate:

MyRepo1/
|-- doc/      <- Obsidian vault
|-- ...other files

MyRepo2/
|-- doc/      <- Obsidian vault
`-- ...other files

To make things clearer, I created symlinks in my ~/Documents folder:

~/Documents/
|-- MyRepo1-doc -> ../MyRepo1/doc
`-- MyRepo2-doc -> ../MyRepo2/doc

This way, I can open each vault via its symlink and see meaningful names in Obsidian's vault manager. This setup works perfectly with Obsidian itself and with Git on the command line - for example:

cd ~/Documents/MyRepo1-doc
git status

Git correctly resolves the symlink and operates as expected. However, the Git plugin in Obsidian seems to have trouble with this setup and doesn't behave consistently when accessing the vault through a symlink.

@Vinzent03 I realize this isn't the most typical use case, but I thought it might be worth sharing in case it's something you'd like to support.

[xloggr]

One more thing I noticed: the Git plugin also doesn't seem to respect git-crypt encryption.

When I run git diff from the command line or inside my IDE (JetBrains Rider), I get the correct and readable diff output, as expected.

However, the Git plugin in Obsidian appears to show the diff between the encrypted and decrypted versions of the file, which makes the output unreadable and essentially useless for tracking changes.

Just thought I'd mention this as well, in case it helps identify areas for improvement.

[Vinzent03]

I guess you are using the "split" diff view style. Could you try setting it to "unified" in the plugin settings and see if it fixes that?

[xloggr]

Yep, the unified one works - thanks for the tip!

[Vinzent03]

Okay great. As explained a bit by the description of the setting, the split diff view (default) does not use the diff generated by git, but is manually computed by just reading the source files. The unified diff view directly displays the diff output from git. I'm unsure if it's possible, or I want to support something like git-crypt (haven't worked with it before) for the split view as well.

[plashal]

I use .gitmodules option used within a parent repository. (It should be located at the root of your project.)

• Purpose: It lists all submodules in the repository, specifying for each the path (relative to the root) where the submodule's content lives, and the URL of the submodule's remote repository.

• Format: The syntax matches standard Git config files, with a section per submodule. Each section contains at least two keys:

  • path: The relative directory holding the submodule's contents.
  • url: The repository URL from which the submodule can be cloned.
  • Optionally, other keys can be specified, such as branch, to track a specific branch.

nice little writeup:
cyberdemon.org/2024/03/20/submodules