How to pull remote branch from somebody else s repo

Question

I ve got a project hosted on GitHub which somebody has forked  On their fork  they ve created a new branch  foo  and made some changes   How do I pull their  foo  into a new branch also named  foo  in my repo   I understand they could submit a pull request to me  but I d like to initiate this process myself   Assume the following    Because they forked my project  both our repos share the same  history  Although GitHub shows their project was forked from mine  my local repository doesn t have any references to this person s project  Do I need to add theirs as a remote  I don t have a branch called  foo  yet - I don t know if I need to manually create this first  I definitely want this pulled into a separate branch and not my master

User · Answer

GitHub has a new option relative to the preceding answers  just copy paste the command lines from the PR    Scroll to the bottom of the PR to see the Merge or Squash and merge button Click the link on the right  view command line instructions Press the Copy icon to the right of Step 1 Paste the commands in your terminal

User · Answer

git remote add coworker git   path to coworkers repo git git fetch coworker git checkout --track coworker foo   This will setup a local branch foo  tracking the remote branch coworker foo  So when your co-worker has made some changes  you can easily pull them   git checkout foo git pull     Response to comments      Cool    And if I d like to make my own   changes to that branch  should I   create a second local branch  bar    from  foo  and work there instead of   directly on my  foo     You don t need to create a new branch  even though I recommend it  You might as well commit directly to foo and have your co-worker pull your branch  But that branch already exists and your branch foo need to be setup as an upstream branch to it   git branch --set-upstream foo colin foo   assuming colin is your repository  a remote to your co-workers repository  defined in similar way   git remote add colin git   path to colins repo git

User · Answer

If the forked repo is protected so you can t push directly into it  and your goal is to make changes to their foo  then you need to get their branch foo into your repo like so     git remote add protected repo https   github com theirusername their repo git git fetch protected repo  git checkout --no-track protected repo foo   Now you have a local copy of foo with no upstream associated to it  You can commit changes to it  or not  and then push your foo to your own remote repo     git push --set-upstream origin foo   Now foo is in your repo on GitHub and your local foo is tracking it  If they continue to make changes to foo you can fetch theirs and merge into your foo   git checkout foo  git fetch protected repo git merge protected repo foo

User · Answer

If antak s answer    git fetch git github com  lt THEIR USERNAME gt   lt REPO gt  git  lt THEIR BRANCH gt   lt OUR NAME FOR BRANCH gt     gives you   Permission denied  publickey   fatal  Could not read from remote repository   Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists    Then  following Przemek D s advice  use   git fetch https   github com  lt THEIR USERNAME gt   lt REPO gt  git  lt THEIR BRANCH gt   lt OUR NAME FOR BRANCH gt

User · Answer

No  you don t need to add them as a remote   That would be clumbersome and a pain to do each time   Grabbing their commits   git fetch git github com theirusername reponame git theirbranch ournameforbranch   This creates a local branch named ournameforbranch which is exactly the same as what theirbranch was for them   For the question example  the last argument would be foo foo   Note  ournameforbranch part can be further left off if thinking up a name that doesn t conflict with one of your own branches is bothersome  In that case  a reference called FETCH HEAD is available   You can git log FETCH HEAD to see their commits then do things like cherry-picked to cherry pick their commits   Pushing it back to them   Oftentimes  you want to fix something of theirs and push it right back   That s possible too   git fetch git github com theirusername reponame git theirbranch git checkout FETCH HEAD    fix fix fix  git push git github com theirusername reponame git HEAD theirbranch   If working in detached state worries you  by all means create a branch using  ournameforbranch and replace FETCH HEAD and HEAD above with ournameforbranch

User · Answer

The following is a nice expedient solution that works with GitHub for checking out the PR branch from another user s fork  You need to know the pull request ID  which GitHub displays along with the PR title    Example   Fixing your insecure code  8 alice wants to merge 1 commit into your repo master from her repo branch  git checkout -b  lt branch gt  git pull origin pull 8 head   Substitute your remote if different from origin  Substitute 8 with the correct pull request ID

[git] How to pull remote branch from somebody else's repo

Examples related to git

Examples related to github

Examples related to git-branch

Examples related to git-pull

Examples related to git-remote