Introduction to Git Work Tree

Git has been in the software business for almost a decade now, with many capabilities and commands, and while most of the time merely understanding principles like how to merge a branch and how to rebase are sufficient for everyday git workflow, there is always something new to learn with git.

Git worktrees is one such functionality. We will discover why and how to get started with git-worktree in this tutorial, and by the conclusion of this post, you will be able to modify the way you work with git.

Worktree let you simultaneously check out multiple branches of a repository in multiple directories. workrees share the same git history ( contents of the .git directory) instead of cloning the repository in a different directory, This makes them faster and utilizes less space. Consider worktree as building clones of your primary repository at different times. worktrees stay on your machine locally and they can not be pushed to a remote origin like a branch.

Here are a few reasons why you should use git worktrees :

Fixing bugs becomes a top priority while working which may interrupt your ongoing work. Ideally, you would git stash your current changes to work on the bug fix and circle back later to continue. But dealing with stashes may get difficult over time if you need to switch frequently. In this context, having different folders for different tasks can be easy to work with.

While Working in a team, reviewing pull requests in time is also another high priority. You'll regularly encounter situations where you have to run the code under review in order to fully understand it. Again this may interrupt your current work. Hence creating a separate worktree just to review the code and removing it after the Pull Request is merged is easier,

Developers frequently experiment every day, which requires trying out several approaches to a particular problem. Consider a scenario where you are trying to introduce tests in your codebase.

Git worktrees share the same git history, which facilitates working with large repositories more efficiently. When your repository has large-sized assets, for instance,

To use a Git work tree, you first need to create a new branch in your Git repository. You can do this using the git branch command. For example, if you want to create a new branch named my-branch, you can use the following command:

This will create a new branch in your Git repository, but it will not switch your working directory to the new branch. To switch to the new branch, you can use the

git checkout

command. For example, if you want to switch to the

my-branch

branch, you can use the following command:

Once you are on the new branch, you can use the git worktree command to create a new work tree for the branch. The git worktree command takes the following syntax:

The <path> argument specifies the location where you want to create the new work tree, and the <branch> argument specifies the branch that you want to use for the work tree. For example, if you want to create a new work tree for the my-branch branch in a directory named my-work-tree, you can use the following command:

This will create a new work tree at the specified location, and it will checkout the

`my-branch` branch in the work tree. You can then use the work tree like any other directory on your system, and you can make changes to the files in the work tree. When you are ready to commit your changes, you can use the git add and git commit commands as usual.

You can then push your changes to the remote repository using the git push

command.

This will push the changes that you made in the work tree to the

my-branch

branch in the remote repository.

In conclusion, using a git worktree can be a useful tool for managing and organizing your Git workflow, as it allows you to have multiple working directories linked to a single repository. This can be particularly useful for working on multiple branches or features simultaneously, and for keeping your local working directory clean and organized. However, it can also be somewhat confusing or overwhelming for new users, and it can be more resource-intensive and difficult to manage than using a single working directory.