How to work simultaneously on a few branches

Question

This is a follow-up on this question on creating branches.

It strikes me as odd that I would still work on one repository because the files on my local machine will be a

Answer 1

Your concern about 'the files on my local machine will be a weird mix of different experiments.' is unfounded - if you have branch 2 checked out, you will not see the files of branch 1 at the same time.

I would do something like

# on master branch
git checkout master
# Create a branch for feature 1
git checkout -b feature_1
# work on feature 1

# Start a new feature branch
git checkout master
git checkout -b feature_2
# work on feature 2

# feature 2 finished and committed, time to merge 
git checkout master
git merge feature_2

# update feature_1 branch
git checkout feature_1
git merge master