This change in 2.0.9 is a bit problematic:

• Even if a path is explicitly provided to the constructor, the GIT_DIR environment variable is used instead
• For things like git hooks, GIT_DIR is set to .git by default. This will result in self.git_dir being set to .git (os.path.abspath instead of os.path.normpath would fix this). Consequently, subsequent commands fails (eg: repo.git.status())