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Improving Your Productivity With Git Worktrees

Published at

1/11/2025

What is Worktree

git-worktree is a way to work on multiple branches at a time in a non-blocking pattern. We can checkout multiple branches and we can open each on it's on Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or Code Editor.

# Checkout a new branch based on the current branch
git worktree add /path/to/new-branch

# Way to create a new branch where branch and dir name are different
git worktree add /path/to/branch -b my-new-branch

# To work on an exisiting branch
git worktree add /path/to/branch existing-branch

# Deliting a worktree
git worktree remove /path/to/branch

Git worktrees are synced to the main repo (where the checkout) happened which means we can manage them from there. Further, object references (refs) are also shared across the main worktree (repo where the checkout happened) and other worktrees.

Important

Git manages the worktrees for us. This means that it maintains metadata to remove and cleanout stale worktrees. To avoid this, we have to use the lock feature of worktree and/or configure the git-gc (Garbage Collection) utility.

git worktree add /path/to/new-branch --lock

# Or

git worktree lock --reason "I am not done with you" /path/to/new-branch

So, now that we know how to create a new worktree, how can worktree help us where switch can't?

Switch VS Worktree

Checkout Process

git-switch

# git-checkout
git add .
git commit -m "Committing before moving to another branch"
# git push -u origin current-branch

# Checkout a new branch based on main
git switch -c hotfix/broken-link main

# Or
git add .
git stash
git switch -c hotfix/broken-link main

git-worktree

# By default, worktrees checkout the new branch from the main branch unless specifid otherwise.
git worktree add ../urgent-fix --reason "To fix a broken link in our UI" --checkout hotfix/broken-link

We can reduce the amount of time we take to get started on the new branch as we don't have to stage or commit anything.

Non-Blocked Workflows.

Because you can only checkout one branch at a time with git-switch, if you are running for example, a deployment , you can't make changes to the source code without risking introducing syntax errors that the deployment command line interface (CLI) will pick up and crash the deployment.

git worktree add ../deployment-test --reason "To test my deployment for failure" --checkout my-working-branch

make -f ../deployment-test/Makefile

Using worktrees allows us to delegate the deployment testing to another worktree with our working branch checked out while we can continue to work on the current copy we are on in the main worktree.

Quick Experimentation

Using git-switch to set an experimentation branch can be time consuming and expensive as mentioned before. Additionally, if we are experimenting with new packages and configurations, these are things that are not usually tracked and are added to the .gitignore file to avoid accidental commits. To avoid these issues, we can leverage git-worktree.

# Checkout a throw-away branch for a quick experiment
git worktree add ../my-experiment --checkout working-branch --detach

# Remove the branch when done 
git worktree remove ../my-experiment

Conclusion

As developers, we are always moving fast and living dangerously. It is always a positive when we can find ways to help us continue to do so with reduced risks. Git worktrees is a great way to speed up your workflow and experiment in a non-blocking, non-destructive manner.

Hope you found this guide useful and as awesome as I did.

References

git Article's

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