HOWTO: git - change branch without touching working copy (at all)

Did you ever had the need in a git repository to change to another branch without altering AT ALL the working copy and ever wondered how that's done?

Usual use cases might be when you mde some changes to the working copy thinking you were on another branch, or you double-track in git a directory which is also tracked by another VCS (e.g. ClearCase).

What you need, in fact, is to update the index and not touch the working copy. The command that does that is

git read-tree otherbranch

If you also need to commit the state of your working tree to the otherbranch, you also need to tell git to actually associate the curent HEAD with the branch you just switched to:

git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/otherbranch

I use this approach at my work place* to develop/experiment with possible code improvements on my machine before considering the merge into the official code.

* The preferred VCS is (Base) ClearCase, and I keep a git repository over the relevant part of the project in the ClerCase Dynamic View, so for synchronisations, the files in the working copy are updated by ClearCase and I have to resync my git branch (clearcaseint) following the latest official code from time to time, so I can pull in my local disk git repository the clearcaseint branch and merge it with my experimental changes in my git feature branches. 

If people are curious about how I work with ClearCase and git, I can expand on this in another post.