Git Worktrees: Replace Your Pile of Clones with One Manageable Repository

Table Of Contents What is a Git worktree? Why use worktrees instead of several clones? A practical directory convention Everyday Git worktree commands Consolidating several independent clones Safety rules before starting Phase 1: Inventory every clone Phase 2: Choose the canonical repository Phase 3: Decide what each clone should become Phase 4: Convert one clone Moving a worktree Recovering a deleted .git worktree file When should a worktree be locked? When should git worktree prune be used? Final validation Quick reference Closing thoughts Have you ever ended up with a directory structure like this? ~/src/project ~/src2/project ~/src3/project ~/src4/project Each directory started innocently enough. One was for main. Another was for a feature branch. A third contained a half-finished experiment. The fourth had several untracked test files you were afraid to lose. Eventually, each clone had its own: stale view of the remote repository, duplicated Git history,