How to avoid Visual Studio rebuild after switching Git branches back and forth?

Asked 10/2, 2012 at 0:41 Answered 8/4, 2020 at 3:7

Solved visual-studio git last-modified building

I use Git for source control and build with Visual Studio 2008. Mostly I build on one branch (master). Often I need to do a code review and switch to another branch (develop) temporarily. I do not build code that I review and after review is finished I switch back to the original branch:

develop on master
commit everything (branch is clean)
build
switch to develop
do code review
switch to master
continue to develop on master
build (recompiles many files, not only ones modified in previous step)

If master and develop have different versions of one file, the modification date and time for that file are updated to the moment of checkout after switching branches in step 5. This causes Visual Studio to rebuild them in the step 8 despite the fact that souce code have not changed.

How can I avoid massive rebuilds when changing branches?

Singley answered 10/2, 2012 at 0:41 Comment(1)

There is a good discussion about it here: #10356665 – Schaerbeek 4/6, 2019 at 13:9

You could script a checkout of just the differring files. So don't do a real checkout but alter the working directory to look like the other branch.

Brianna answered 10/2, 2012 at 6:29 Comment(5)

Sounds like a fairly complicated script. It is like reimplementing checkout functionality that preserves modification time. Or can I do this simpler? Existing script? – Singley 13/2, 2012 at 9:23

Does Git actually store modification times or will I have to preserve them manually in such a script? – Singley 13/2, 2012 at 9:29

It would not be a complicated script. You can get a list of files from git diff --stat – Brianna 14/2, 2012 at 9:7

Thanks for the tip. I will try to write one. – Singley 14/2, 2012 at 17:51

Thanks. I didn't write the tool yet, but I guess this is the best answer I could get given my question. – Singley 4/3, 2012 at 20:46

As a workaround, it might be useful for you to do code reviews in a different clone from your development clone. That way, switching to a review branch won't change the files in your master clone, which won't cause VS to unnecessarily rebuild them.

Myiasis answered 10/2, 2012 at 0:46 Comment(2)

Thanks for the proposal, but my repository is huge - over 3GB. I would like to avoid wasting space. – Singley 10/2, 2012 at 0:55

git clone on a local machine hardlinks files by default when possible, so a clone might take up less than 3GB on your disk. – Deadly 10/2, 2012 at 1:10

You could script a checkout of just the differring files. So don't do a real checkout but alter the working directory to look like the other branch.

Brianna answered 10/2, 2012 at 6:29 Comment(5)

Sounds like a fairly complicated script. It is like reimplementing checkout functionality that preserves modification time. Or can I do this simpler? Existing script? – Singley 13/2, 2012 at 9:23

Does Git actually store modification times or will I have to preserve them manually in such a script? – Singley 13/2, 2012 at 9:29

It would not be a complicated script. You can get a list of files from git diff --stat – Brianna 14/2, 2012 at 9:7

Thanks for the tip. I will try to write one. – Singley 14/2, 2012 at 17:51

Thanks. I didn't write the tool yet, but I guess this is the best answer I could get given my question. – Singley 4/3, 2012 at 20:46

git worktree works. It let you work on multi-branches and without switching.

Reckoner answered 8/4, 2020 at 3:7 Comment(1)

Can you explain how to use git workitree to fix the original post problem? – Ineslta 8/6, 2021 at 20:26

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