Sara Golemon returns to the show — her first appearance was way back in Episode 2 — for a deep dive into Git Worktrees, a powerful but underused Git feature that lets you work on multiple branches simultaneously without the overhead of stashing, context-switching, or rebuilding from scratch. The episode covers practical real-world use cases, a live demo on the PHP source repo, Docker/Lando integration, and some lively chat about AI, scripting, and developer productivity.

Topics Covered

Git Worktrees Main Topic

Rather than switching between branches and losing build state, Git Worktrees let you check out multiple branches into separate directories — all sharing a single .git history.

• How Worktrees differ from standard git checkout branch switching
• Why they shine for projects with build artifacts (compiled code, minified JS) — no recompile on directory switch
• Working with PHP’s multi-version release branches (8.1 → 8.2 → 8.3 → 8.4 → 8.5 → master) simultaneously
• Merging a fix up through all active PHP release branches in a live demo
• Pushing all branches at once from a single shared .git directory
• Cleaning up with git worktree prune — just deleting the folder isn’t enough!

git worktree add <path> <branch>
git worktree list
git worktree prune
git branch -d <branch>   # Only works after pruning

Worktrees + Docker / Web Development

The hosts explored how Worktrees fit into a typical PHP web dev workflow with Docker.

• Run multiple Docker Compose environments simultaneously — one per Worktree/branch
• Port clashing is real; solutions include scripted aliases and Lando (handles conflicts automatically)
• Sara’s Git alias new from Facebook/Meta automated Worktree creation and assigned unique IPs per ticket
• composer install only needs to run once per Worktree — not on every branch switch

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