Yeah, when you had multiple agents working on the same machine, branch isolation was no longer sufficient.

A repository folder can only be on one branch at a time.

A worktree is basically equivalent to a cp -R + git branch, which allows this new workflow to occur.

I loved this particular historical insight as to why `git worktree` was added in 2015:

Before worktrees, kernel devs faced a major inconvenience when switching contexts, e.g., stopping feature work to fix an urgent bug on a release branch.

Running git stash and switching branches alters timestamps on thousands of files.

This forces `make` to perform a full re-compile, which can take up to an hour on large kernels.

And the team behind opencode is working on an alternative https://github.com/anomalyco/rift

I still don't understand how people use git worktrees with Docker. You need a full database and etc. For me it's simpler to have multiple checkouts.

I use a skill that basically boils down to 'keep track of ongoing work in a json file, create a new numbered clone for each separate thread of work, delete when done'. Worktrees are too opaque and not entirely isolated for my liking.

How small are people’s projects if they find worktrees useful? I use them for hobby stuff, but $DAYJOB is a different story because of testing

I set up multiple work trees in one vscode workspace last year and wrote in the agents.md how to merge branches - but I spend about a third of the time helping agents integrate and merge. I remember wishing the tooling would catch up

I used to create multiple local worktrees and mount the sub directories using Docker. This approach had significant limitations because many paths in the agent and .git files were hard-coded.

I can barely keep up with one single thread and branch, go figure.

i have some fun experiments i'm doing with full virtualization middle ware of all sys calls for agents tools/shell commands/io, still far from daily driver, but allows me to do a very rich overlay / virtual file system tom foolery in place

Worktrees don’t support git submodules and it’s killing me in my monorepo

I have moved from my own awkward scripts to lazyworktree TUI and I loved it

best tool yet!