vercel/turborepo · critical

which git produced an invalid absolute path {}

Error message

which git produced an invalid absolute path {}

What it means

Scm::find_bin() locates the git executable with the which crate and converts the discovered path into an AbsoluteSystemPathBuf. which guarantees an absolute path, so the conversion can only fail on non-UTF-8 bytes — the panic fires when the resolved git binary lives under a path containing invalid UTF-8.

Source

Thrown at crates/turborepo-scm/src/lib.rs:315

        // If which produces an invalid absolute path, it's not an execution error, it's
        // a programming error. We expect it to always give us an absolute path
        // if it gives us any path. If that's not the case, we should crash.
        let bin = Self::find_bin()?;
        let root =
            find_git_root(path_in_repo).map_err(|e| GitError::Root(path_in_repo.to_owned(), e))?;
        Ok(Self {
            root,
            bin,
            attrs: OnceLock::new(),
            github_actions_remote_base_ref_fallback: false,
            slowest_files: None,
        })
    }

    pub fn find_bin() -> Result<AbsoluteSystemPathBuf, which::Error> {
        which::which("git").map(|path| {
            AbsoluteSystemPathBuf::try_from(path.as_path()).unwrap_or_else(|_| {
                panic!(
                    "which git produced an invalid absolute path {}",
                    path.display()
                )
            })
        })
    }
}

fn find_git_root(turbo_root: &AbsoluteSystemPath) -> Result<AbsoluteSystemPathBuf, Error> {
    let rev_parse = Command::new("git")
        .args(["rev-parse", "--show-cdup"])
        .current_dir(turbo_root)
        .output()?;
    if !rev_parse.status.success() {
        let stderr = String::from_utf8_lossy(&rev_parse.stderr);
        return Err(Error::git_error(format!(
            "git rev-parse --show-cdup error: {stderr}"
        )));

View on GitHub (pinned to 7fe373bc27)

Solutions

1. Check what actually resolves: `where git` (Windows) or `which git` — the printed path should be plain ASCII
2. Reinstall git to a default ASCII location (e.g. C:\Program Files\Git) and make sure that PATH entry wins
3. Fix or remove the non-UTF-8 PATH entry (often caused by an encoded username — recreate the directory in ASCII)
4. As a workaround, set PATH explicitly in the shell/task before running turbo

// Resolve git once and verify the path is ASCII/UTF-8 before turbo runs
use std::process::Command;
let out = Command::new("where") // Windows; use "which -a" on Unix
    .arg("git")
    .output()?;
let paths = String::from_utf8_lossy(&out.stdout);
if paths.contains('\uFFFD') {
    return Err("git resolved to a non-UTF-8 path — fix PATH".into());
}

When it happens

Trigger: A PATH entry with non-UTF-8 bytes (legacy ANSI-encoded directory or username) that resolves git first; a git shim/wrapper installed in an oddly-encoded location on Windows.

Common situations: Windows user profiles with non-ASCII or legacy-encoded names where the PATH byte sequence is not valid UTF-8; corporate wrapper scripts in unusual directories; WOS/WSL boundary quirks mixing encodings.

Related errors

• joined path is absolute and valid utf8: {err:?}
• clean should produce valid UTF-8: {err:?}
• anchored system path is relative: {}
• clean should preserve utf8: {err:?}
• path cleaning should preserve UTF-8: {err:?}

AI-assisted analysis of vercel/turborepo@7fe373bc27 (2026-08-17). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9c42c97bef214845. Report an issue: GitHub.