how to use worktrees in git

[godmar]

As I'm expanding my git skills, I've recently started to look into git worktrees.

Rather than switching between branches (which requires you to commit any outstanding work), it's easy to create a whole new working tree in which a given branch is checked out. git status and git bash's custom prompt understand this as well.

Notes:

• the work tree should not be under your regular git working tree. For instance, to create a working tree that's a sibling with my Robot-2026-Code directory, I use

$ git worktree add -b 22-program-hood ../22-program-hood origin/22-program-hood

This will create a working tree in ../22-program-hood, make a local branch by the same name, and have that branch track the origin branch. (This is what you normally want, not sure why git made this so complicated.) Without the -b, it will not create a local branch and you'll be in detached head state.

• on the other hand, if no remote branch exists, and you want to start a topic, just doing

git worktree add ../xbranch

will create both the directory and a local branch xbranch that you can then push upstream in the usual way.

• you delete a worktree with

git worktree remove xbranch

(Note that just nuking the directory will leave some metadata behind.)

• once created, you can operate within the tree as normal - adding, committing, pushing, etc.

[aidnem]

Thanks for the info!

[aidnem]

@godmar I did a little research and google AI suggests the following alias to simplify the "what you normally want" case:

git config --global alias.wta '!f() { git worktree add -b "$1" "../$1"; }; f'

To make it fully match your example, I think the following should work:

git config --global alias.wta '!f() { git worktree add -b "$1" "../$1" "origin/$1"; }; f'