I am trying to use GitPython for some repo manipulation, but ran into issues with my app, with handles open where i wouldn't expect.

Bug-jarring the issue, it seems that calling repo.index.commit() results in a several (4, consistently) git.exe processes being spawned, each holding a handle to the repo's root directory newRepo. When the test below goes to delete this TempDir, the processes are still up, causing a failure on context-manager __exit__(). My app occasionally needs to do a similar cleanup, so hits the same issue.

On the one hand, it looks like there is no contect-manager capable repo-wrapper, meaning it makes sense if some resources is open, it will not typically be cleaned/GC'd before the tempdir __exit__(). On the other hand - if Repo is going to behave like that, it really should not persist resources that have such side-effects.

Here is a working unittest:

import unittest
import git
import tempfile
import os.path

class Test(unittest.TestCase):

    def testCreateRepo(self):
        with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory(prefix=(__loader__.name) + "_") as mydir:

            # MAKE NEW REPO 
            repo = git.Repo.init(path=os.path.join(mydir, "newRepo"), mkdir=True)
            self.assertTrue(os.path.isdir(os.path.join(repo.working_dir, ".git")), "Failed to make new repo?")
            
            # MAKE FILE, COMMIT REPO
            testFileName = "testFile.txt"
            open(os.path.join(repo.working_dir, testFileName) , "w").close()
            repo.index.add([testFileName])
            self.assertTrue(repo.is_dirty())
            
            #### 
            # COMMENTING THIS OUT --> TEST PASSES
            repo.index.commit("added initial test file") 
            self.assertFalse(repo.is_dirty())
            #### 
            
            # adding this does not affect the handle
            git.cmd.Git.clear_cache()
            
            
            print("done") # exception thrown right after this, on __exit__
            # i can also os.walk(topdown=False) and delete all files and dirs (including .git/)
            # it is just the  newRepo/  folder itself who's handle is held open
            
if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

PermissionError: [WinError 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process: 'C:\Users\%USER%\AppData\Local\Temp\EXAMPLE_gitpython_v3kbrly_\newRepo'

digging a little deeper, it seems that gitPython spawns multiple instances of git.exe processes, and each of them holds a handle to the root folder of the repo newRepo.

• set a breakpoint immediately before the error, use sysinternals/handle to see open handles to newRepo ... git.exe (4 separate PID's of git.exe to be precise)
• using sysinternals/procexp i can see that that they are all spawned from the python instance
  -- I'm typically running this from PyDev, but i verified the issue reproduces under vanila command line invocation of python.exe as well
• the exception indicates it's a handle to newRepo being held. Adding a little extra code to the above I think that is the only handle held. I am able to successfully os.remove/os.rmdir() every dir and file, including all of .git/; and i finally manually recreate the issue seen on exit() in my example when i os.rmdir(newRepo)

stepping through, it's the call to repo.index.commit() that actually leads to the the git.exe(s) being spawned.