IIUC, your use case is commonly known as subdirectory checkouts. These can be done with git's sparse checkout facility[1], but you still have to make a full re

IIUC, your use case is commonly known as subdirectory checkouts. These can be done with git's sparse checkout facility[1], but you still have to make a full repository clone to create a sparse checkout. To clarify, multiple worktree support creates multiple checkout trees for one (local) .git repo directory. I.e. instead of the old two-clone way of having two working trees: $ git clone <URL>/foo.git foo1 $ git clone <URL>/foo.git foo2 Now it's possible to do this: $ git clone <URL>/foo.git foo1 $ cd foo1 $ git worktree add ../foo2 Enter ../foo2 (identifier foo2) Switched to a new branch 'foo2' N.B.: with multiple worktree support, a given branch name can only be checked out to one worktree at a time. E.g. following from the above example: $ cd ../foo2 $ git co master fatal: 'master' is already checked out at '/path/to/foo1/.git' Of course, in this workflow the new "foo2" branch will also be pointing at HEAD of origin/master. It's just that the local repo can only have one worktree pointing at a local branch at a time, otherwise git would have to automatically juggle some ugly and off-topic file synchronization stuff. [1] http://jasonkarns.com/blog/subdirectory-checkouts-with-git-sparse-checkout/ http://jasonkarns.com/blog/subdirectory-checkouts-with-git-s... edit: fixed a couple of confusing typos.