Two Git Features That Helped Me Ship Faster

Found 2 interesting git features that helped me in my work

Git Worktree

I was working on two different items in parallel, but the code changes were in the same repository. So, I created two branches. Now, switching between the two branches is tedious (commit or stash, wait for the IDE to load changes, etc.) Then, git worktree came to help.

git worktree add <new-directory> <my-branch>

This command checks out <my-branch> in <new-directory>, so I can open it as another project in my IDE.

So, now both my branches appear as separate projects in my IDE and I can work on them independently.

When the work is done, use

git worktree remove <worktree-directory>

to remove the directory.

How is this better than cloning the project twice?

• Faster, offline, low disk space, create as many worktrees.
• Cannot checkout the same branch on two directories, so no inconsistency.
• Can check the list of worktrees with git worktree list.

Git patch

Recently, I made changes to a repo for which I only had read privileges. So, I could not push my changes to the remote server. I wanted someone else to take these changes and push them. Here come git patches.

I exported the commits (patches)

git format-patch --output="commits.patch" commit1..commitN

This creates a file that looks like an ordinary human-readable diff file. Now, this patch file can be sent over email or instant messaging.

Applying the patches is even easier, just

git am "commits.patch"

It's like cherry-pick but more manual and flexible. The interesting part is that the commit messages and authorship are still preserved.