Multiple Git repos in a single directory

There might be a case when you want 2 different Git repositories in a single directory. The most logical situation which comes to mind is keeping 2 repositories in your home-folder, one to perhaps keep your configuration files, and another to keep your custom scripts.

Seems out-of-bounds right? Not really. It so happens that Git offers a ‘git-dir’ flag to all its commands which tells where the Git files for that repository are stored. Here’s how to put it to some real use.

1. Firstly, do a git init in your home folder. This creates a folder ‘.git’ in your home folder.

2. Go move it to say ‘.rcgit’ with mv .git .rcgit.

3. Do a git init again. Git won’t know there’s another repo there in rcgit so it works fine. Move this new ‘.git’ folder to say ‘.scgit’.

4. Now edit your ‘.zsh_aliases’, ‘.zshrc’ or ‘.bashrc’ to include these 2 lines

Add to aliases:

alias rcgit='git --git-dir=.rcgit'
alias scgit='git --git-dir=.scgit'

As you may have probably guessed by now, you can use the 2 repositories by using ‘rcgit’/‘scgit’ instead of ‘git’ in their parent folder.

Note that this won’t work if you try these commands from any of their children folders. You’ll have to give the –git-dir flag manually in that case.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you would have trouble keeping 2 separate ‘.gitignores’. Hopefully the 2 repositories would be able to share a single one.

For another powerful functionality in Git, look at submodules. Some other day perhaps.