Git Worktree

Most of the time when I am working a project, version controlled by git, I am working on a single branch. Implementing single feature or solving a single bug. But at times, I have to make a quick fix in another branch or just test the commit made by somebody else. Usually, if I have uncommitted changes in my current branch, I would use git-stash. I would first git stash push, do the magic I want to do, and then git stash pop. But this can be inefficient and still only allows me to work on a single branch at a time. And I am always scared of using it wrong and losing all the changes.

Git-worktree is a very nice feature of git that allows to have multiple worktree at the same time. Of course, all the worktrees has to be in different folder, but they are connected to a single repository. By default, worktree is the branch you are working on. So, when master branch is checked out, the folder structure looks something like this:

.
├── .git
├── project-files-on-master

With git-worktree, I can open another branch for temporary work in another folder. Something like this:

.
├── .git
├── master
├── ../develop
│       ├── project-files-on-develop

Following is the list of commands (verbatim from git-scm.com) related to git-worktree.

git worktree add [-f] [--detach] [--checkout] [--lock [--reason <string>]] [-b <new-branch>] <path> [<commit-ish>]
git worktree list [-v | --porcelain [-z]]
git worktree lock [--reason <string>] <worktree>
git worktree move <worktree> <new-path>
git worktree prune [-n] [-v] [--expire <expire>]
git worktree remove [-f] <worktree>
git worktree repair [<path>…​]
git worktree unlock <worktree>

The command git worktree add ../develop adds a worktreee at ../develop and checks out develop branch. If develop branch does not exist, it creates one for us. Easy peasy. I can specify the branch name with -b branch-name to create a new branch as well. For the existing branch or any other commit apart from HEAD, I can use the <commit-ish> argument that can refer to a branch name, commit, or distance from HEAD. I will not write here in details how to use all of the git-worktree commands. Although, I will write a few use cases for it.

Git-worktree is definitely a cool feature of git and can be integrated in the work-flow nicely. Specially for some use cases. Does this mean that git-stash is redundant? May be not. In some cases, git-stash can also be useful.