[MBCook]

> and then clone the repository multiple times so you have multiple working copies.

This is probably not what you want. First, you should know that switching between branches in Git is insanely fast. In general, it won't get in your way.

If you clone the repository, each one is a full git repository. That means you'll triple the storage on the disk. Worse, you'll have to do 3x as many pulls to keep all 3 repositories up to date.

> You're rarely developing two things at once in any given instant of time... why not just quickly check out the branch you want?

It often comes up, but that's what we do. We may have a dozen branches on our machines (the thing(s) we're working on, recent things we worked on, the one that's been sitting for a while we're waiting on an answer to pick up again) and we can switch our project within a second or two on a simple rotating hard drive.

[taspeotis]

I know this, but GP was asking about how to do it with "different base directories" which I'm assuming is asking for an analogy to Subversion's multiple working copies (i.e. check out this location from the repository to this location on disk).

[acqq]

Yes you're right, the thing is, the project produces different binaries which should be accessible for all different versions, which was solved by having only different base directories, all the configuration files build to same subdirectories no matter which version. If I'd switch to "always having only one version in a single base directory" then I'd have to maintain different temporary output and binary output names in all the configuration files in every version which is quite ugly. Then I can't use any "known fixed subdirectory names" in the projects.