Git Stash, Git worktrees

Context switching between branches while working on a feature can get cumbersome. You might need to switch branches for reviewing peer code and running it locally, referring to some branch for some implementation, make a hotfix.

To do this without losing your current feature work. There are couple of ways to do it.

Git Stash

• on the current branch, git stash
• switch to the other branch you want to refer (or) code review (or) make hotfix for
• do your required task on the other branch
• git checkout to current branch you are working on
• to retrieve your current changes, git stash pop
• tada, Your changes are now restored!

D:\test-app on main$ git stash
D:\test-app on main$ git checkout featurev1
D:\test-app on featurev1$
# do changes ...
D:\test-app on featurev1$ git checkout main
D:\test-app on main$ git stash pop
# your changes will be popped out ...

But there’s a better workflow for more organized and parallel working:

Git Worktrees

• Worktrees are like folders (think of it like git clone but it requires no installation setup, uses existing setup and uses the same .git folder)
• You can create a worktree on a specific branch, a directory will be created. Switch to that directory, see all the changes. Your branch that you were working on will be unaffected, you can cd ../ to get back to your working main without having to do git stash
• Essentially it creates a directory, you can view/edit in parallel without having to commit your current work or stash it for later.

D:\test-app on main$ git worktree add ../worktree/featurev1 featurev1
D:\test-app on main$ cd ../worktree/featurev1
D:\worktree\featurev1 on featurev1$
# do changes ...
D:\worktree\featurev1 on featurev1$ cd ../../test-app
D:\test-app on main$
# your changes will be here ...
D:\test-app on main$  git worktree list # displays the list of worktrees available
D:/test-app            01ebaa59 [main]
D:/worktree/featurev1  38bf55c0 [featurev1]
D:\test-app on main$ git worktree remove ../worktree/featurev1 # When done with worktree

Note: After switching to a worktree (here it is featurev1), try checkout to the main. it results in error since it is already checked out on a worktree.

D:\worktree\featurev1 on featurev1$ git checkout main
fatal: 'main' is already checked out at 'D:/test-app'

we already have a worktree which has main branch checked out, so cannot able to checkout main branch on featurev1 worktree

# when running git worktree list
D:\test-app on main$  git worktree list
D:/test-app 01ebaa59 [main]

But other branches can be checked out, meaning that the other branches are not checked out in a different worktree. A project can have many worktrees as possible.

TLDR;