git working on two branches simultaneously

I have a project with many branches.

I would like to work on several branches simultaneously without switching back and forth with git checkout.

Is there any way I can do that besides copying the whole repository somewhere else?

Git 2.5+ (Q2 2015) supports this feature!

If you have a git repo cool-app, cd to root (cd cool-app), run git worktree add ../cool-app-feature-A feature/A. This checks out the branch feature/A in it's own new dedicated directory, cool-app-feature-A.

That replaces an older script contrib/workdir/git-new-workdir, with a more robust mechanism where those "linked" working trees are actually recorded in the main repo new $GIT_DIR/worktrees folder (so that work on any OS, including Windows).

Again, once you have cloned a repo (in a folder like /path/to/myrepo), you can add worktrees for different branches in different independent paths (/path/to/br1, /path/to/br2), while having those working trees linked to the main repo history (no need to use a --git-dir option anymore)

See more at "Multiple working directories with Git?".

And once you have created a worktree, you can move or remove it (with Git 2.17+, Q2 2018).

Take a look at $GIT_SRC_DIR/contrib/workdir/git-new-workdir.

According to the commit logs from a port of this repository:

> a simple script to create a working directory that uses symlinks to > point at an exisiting repository. This allows having different > branches in different working directories but all from the same > repository.

Git supports multiple worktree at the same time. For more information see:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6270193/multiple-working-directories-with-git
• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree

How ever it is very hard to support multiple worktree with IDs. For example this is an enhancement request in JGet (eclipse ID) to support worktree.

So, you have to manage project manually (command line) with lots of problems or work with a single worktree in an IDE.

I suggest my small script http://www.redhotchilipython.com/en_posts/2013-02-01-clone-per-feature.html

It will do git clone and replace the config (to "look" at original repo, so pull/push will go into "main" repo) basically, but it's simple enough to serve an abstraction from actual bootstrapping.

Not really as Git only supports to have one working copy of the repository data within the repository directory.

If you want to commit/pull to the same repository with two different working copies, you could create a bare repository and clone it to two working copies.

Whenever you have finished something, you simply push to the "main" bare repository.

Some hints:

man git-clone

git clone --bare