Get Git
Browse any public GitHub or GitLab repository directly inside VS Code — no cloning, no disk usage. Get Git mounts the repo as a read-only workspace folder so you get real editor navigation (Explorer, Ctrl+P go-to-file, tabs, breadcrumbs, syntax highlighting) instead of GitHub/GitLab's web UI.
Why
Reading through a large open-source codebase on GitHub's web UI is painful — no real go-to-file, inconsistent syntax highlighting, no editor keybindings. Cloning a huge repo just to read three files wastes disk and time. Get Git fetches only the file tree up front, then lazily fetches file contents as you open them.
Usage
- Run Get Git: Open Repository from the Command Palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P).
- Enter a repository. Any of these work:
- Shorthand:
sharkdp/bat
- A full GitHub URL:
https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
- A GitHub deep link with branch and path:
https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/tree/master/src
- A GitLab URL (gitlab.com or self-hosted):
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell
- A GitLab deep link:
https://gitlab.example.org/group/subgroup/project/-/tree/main/src
- The repo opens as a new workspace folder. Browse it like any local project — click a file to open it with full syntax highlighting.
Editing, saving, renaming, and deleting are disabled; the workspace is strictly read-only.
Features
- No cloning — the file tree is fetched once via the GitHub/GitLab API and cached in memory; file contents are fetched lazily per-file as you open them.
- GitHub and GitLab — including self-hosted GitLab instances at any domain, and nested GitLab group/subgroup paths.
- Multiple repos at once — open several repos and they coexist as separate workspace folders.
- GitHub sign-in on rate limit — unauthenticated GitHub API calls are capped at 60/hour. If you hit that limit, Get Git offers to sign in through VS Code's built-in GitHub authentication (no separate OAuth app, no tokens to manage).
Known Limitations
- Extremely large repositories (100,000+ files) may hit GitHub's tree API truncation limit; the truncated portion of the tree won't appear.
- Self-hosted GitLab instances are assumed to be mounted at the domain root (the common case) — an instance served from a subpath won't resolve correctly.
- The GitLab token setting is shared across all GitLab hosts; per-host tokens aren't supported.
Requirements
None beyond VS Code itself — no external dependencies to install.
Release Notes
0.0.1
Initial release: browse any public GitHub or GitLab repository (including self-hosted GitLab) as a read-only VS Code workspace, with GitHub sign-in on rate limit.
