Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] doc: git-worktree: Add side by side branch checkout example

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:06:58 -0700

Michal Suchanek <[email-masked]> writes:

> Signed-off-by: Michal Suchanek <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  Documentation/git-worktree.adoc | 10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/git-worktree.adoc b/Documentation/git-worktree.adoc
> index ec31863aec..122b191ff9 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-worktree.adoc
> +++ b/Documentation/git-worktree.adoc
> @@ -525,6 +525,16 @@ $ popd
>  $ git worktree remove ../temp
>  ------------
>  
> +Side by side branch checkouts for a repository using multiple worktrees
> +
> +------------
> +mkdir some-repository
> +cd some-repository
> +git clone --bare [email-masked]:some-org/some-repository .git
> +git --git-dir=.git worktree add some-branch
> +git --git-dir=.git worktree add another-branch
> +------------

It is a good example to have a bare clone and get worktrees attached
to it, but I do not think that it is a great idea to call that bare
clone ".git".  It makes it confusing if that some-repository/
directory that has a ".git" directory is a non-bare clone with no
working tree files, or if it is a directory that Git has no
knowledge about, that happens to have a single bare repository plus
worktrees.  The answer is the latter, but I suspect that Git itself
would probably be confused (i.e. "cd some-repository && git status"
---if you try it, what does it say?).

Naming it after the project may make it more apparent what is going
on when the user goes into that top-level shell directory, perhaps
like this, if we were working with a "bunny" project:

    mkdir bunny
    cd bunny
    git clone --bare [email-masked]:some-org/bunny bunny.git
    git --git-dir=bunny.git worktree add some-branch
    git --git-dir=bunny.git worktree add another-branch

Then when you "cd bunny && ls", you'd see the bare repository
bunny.git with two checkouts.

Having said all that.

I know some folks like such a layout for some (perhaps ideological)
reason (i.e. no checkout is more special than others, everybody is
equal), but I am not absolutely sure if it works better in a larger
workflow in practice than having a primary worktree that is not a
bare repository.  If you do the above with a non-bare repository in
the center, it would look like this:

    mkdir bunny-project
    cd bunny-project
    git clone [email-masked]:some-org/bunny main
    cd main
    git worktree add ../my-topic-1
    git worktree add ../my-topic-2

and have my interaction with the upstream project only from inside
the primary worktree, i.e., "main".  Additional worktrees are more
or less ephemeral, and can go away.

> +
>  BUGS
>  ----
>  Multiple checkout in general is still experimental, and the support