load_git_metadata returns empty dict when docs_dir equals the git root

[isuftin]

Description

When docs_dir is set to the repository root (. or the same path as the git toplevel), the load_git_metadata() function returns an empty dictionary despite valid git history being available. This causes the plugin to fall back to site_author and filesystem timestamps instead of using git data.

Environment

• mkdocs-document-dates: 3.8.5
• mkdocs-materialx: 10.1.6
• properdocs: 1.6.7
• Python: 3.14
• OS: Tested on macOS (native) and Alpine Linux (Docker container)

Reproduction

1. Create a repository where markdown files live at the root (no docs/ subdirectory)
2. Configure mkdocs with docs_dir pointing to the repo root:

docs_dir: !ENV [MKDOCS_DOCS_DIR, 'docs']
# At runtime, MKDOCS_DOCS_DIR is set to the repo root

3. Enable the plugin:

plugins:
  - document-dates:
      position: top
      type: timeago
      show_created: true
      show_updated: true
      show_author: true

4. Build the site. Authors display as site_author fallback and dates are filesystem timestamps, not git dates.

Root Cause

In utils.py, load_git_metadata() computes:

git_root = Path(subprocess.check_output(
    ['git', 'rev-parse', '--show-toplevel'],
    cwd=docs_dir_path, encoding='utf-8'
).strip())
rel_docs_path = docs_dir_path.relative_to(git_root).as_posix()

When docs_dir_path equals git_root, rel_docs_path resolves to '.'.

The git command that follows works correctly:

git -c core.quotepath=false log --reverse --no-merges --use-mailmap \
    --name-only -z --format='%aN%x1f%aE%x1f%at%x1f%B%x00' \
    --relative=. -- '*.md'

This returns valid output (verified: 72KB of commit data in our repo). However, the parsing logic that processes the output appears to fail when rel_docs_path is '.', resulting in an empty dates_cache dictionary.

Verification

from pathlib import Path
from mkdocs_document_dates.utils import load_git_metadata

# Returns empty dict when run from repo root
data = load_git_metadata(Path('.'))
print(data)  # {}

# But the underlying git command returns valid data
import subprocess
cmd = ['git', '-c', 'core.quotepath=false', 'log', '--reverse', '--no-merges',
       '--use-mailmap', '--name-only', '-z', '--format=%aN%x1f%aE%x1f%at%x1f%B%x00',
       '--relative=.', '--', '*.md']
result = subprocess.run(cmd, capture_output=True, encoding='utf-8')
print(f"stdout length: {len(result.stdout)}")  # 72656 bytes

Expected Behavior

load_git_metadata() should correctly parse git log output and return date/author data for all markdown files when docs_dir is the repository root.

Workaround

None currently. Using git-revision-date-localized plugin as an alternative for dates, but it lacks native template integration with materialx.

[jaywhj]

@isuftin

This is a special case occurring when git processes the --relative parameter. The issue has been fixed, and a new version will be released tomorrow.

In addition, the git-revision-date-localized plugin has design flaws leading to poor parsing efficiency.

Thanks for your feedback.

[isuftin]

Thank you @jaywhj - We are using git-revision-date-localized as a workaround currently but will be switching back once the fix is released!