So how is this different from git worktrees exactly ?
replies(2):
I personally find this annoying. I usually like to keep one pristine and always current working copy of main (and develop if applicable) around for search and other analysis tasks[1]. Worktrees would be ideal and efficient but due to the mentioned restriction I have to either waste space for a separate clone or do some ugly workarounds to keep the worktree on the branch while not keeping it on the branch.
jujutsu workspace are much nicer in that regard.
[1] I know there are tons of ways search and analyze in git but over the years I found a pristine working copy to be the most versatile solution.
Tools should adapt to us and not the other way around, but if you are stuck with git, there's a slightly different workflow that supports your use case: detached head. Whenever I check out branches that I don't intend on committing to directly, I checkout e.g. origin/main. This can be checked out in many worktrees. I actually find it more ergonomic and did this before using worktrees: there are no extra steps in keeping a local main pointer up to date.
The complication comes from trying to stay current. With a regular worktree I could just pull, but now I have to remember the branch, fetch all and reset hard to the remembered branch.
You can detach the worktree from the repo, and checkout multiple branches at the same time to different locations. Not sure if this also allows checking out the same branch to multiple locations at the same time. You can also have a swallow clone, so you don't have to waste space for the full repos history. So at the end you still have to waste space for each worktree, but this isn't something jujutsu can avoid either, or can it?
Also, if you end up relying on it for space reasons, worth knowing that cloning from a file:// url switches the hardlink mechanism off so you end up with a full duplicate again.
git worktree add ..\repo -b wt-main --track origin/main
And to be honest, after being disciplined to always do that, I very rarely get error message saying that the branch I want to check out is already checked out in other worktree. Before that, I regularly had a situation when I checked out main branch on second worktree to see the current state of the repo (because my main worktree had a work in progress stuff) and after some time when I finished work on main branch, I tried to check out main branch on my main worktree and got the error. Because I totally forgot that I checked it out some time ago in the other worktree.
Well, that is true, but a branch is nothing more than an automoving label, so I don't see how that is limiting at all. You can have as many branches as you like and you can also just checkout the commit.