How do I check out a remote Git branch

Question

Somebody pushed a branch called test with git push origin test to a shared repository  I can see the branch with git branch -r   Now I m trying to check out the remote test branch   I ve tried    git checkout test which does nothing git checkout origin test gives    no branch   Which is confusing  How can I be on  no branch     How do I check out a remote Git branch

User · Answer

Sidenote  With modern Git   gt   1 6 6   you are able to use just git checkout test   note that it is  test  not  origin test   to perform magical DWIM-mery and create local branch  test  for you  for which upstream would be remote-tracking branch  origin test    The    no branch  in git branch output means that you are on unnamed branch  in so called  quot detached HEAD quot  state  HEAD points directly to commit  and is not symbolic reference to some local branch    If you made some commits on this unnamed branch  you can always create local branch off current commit  git checkout -b test HEAD     EDIT  by editor not author     I found a comment buried below which seems to modernize this answer    Dennis  git checkout  lt non-branch gt   for example git checkout origin test results in detached HEAD   unnamed branch  while git checkout test or git checkout -b test origin test results in local branch test  with remote-tracking branch origin test as upstream      Jakub Narebski Jan 9  14 at 8 17  emphasis on git checkout origin test

User · Answer

You can add a new branch test on local and then use  git branch --set-upstream-to origin test test

User · Answer

First  you need to do   git fetch   If you don t know about branch name  git fetch origin branch name   Second  you can check out remote branch into your local by   git checkout -b branch name origin branch name   -b will create new branch in specified name from your selected remote branch

User · Answer

The git remote show  lt origin name gt  command will list all branches  including un-tracked branches   Then you can find the remote branch name that you need to fetch   Example     git remote show origin   Use these steps to fetch remote branches   git fetch  lt origin name gt   lt remote branch name gt   lt local branch name gt  git checkout  lt local branch name  gt   local branch name should the name that you given fetching    Example     git fetch origin test test   git checkout test

User · Answer

I always do  git fetch origin  amp  amp  git checkout --track origin branch name

User · Answer

If the remote branch name begins with special characteres you need to use single quotes around it in the checkout command  or else git won t know which branch you are talking about   For example  I tried to checkout a remote branch named as  9773 but the command didn t work properly  as shown in the picture below     For some reason I wondered if the sharp symbol     could have something to do with it  and then I tried surrounding the branch name with single quotes  like   9773  rathen than just  9773  and fortunately it worked fine     git checkout -b   9773  origin   9773

User · Answer

Use fetch to pull all your remote     git fetch --all   To list remote branches      git branch -r   For list all your branches     git branch -l     gt  gt outpots like-        develop        test        master   To checkout change a branch     git checkout master

User · Answer

Simply run git checkout with the name of the remote branch  Git will automatically create a local branch that tracks the remote one   git fetch git checkout test   However  if that branch name is found in more than one remote  this won t work as Git doesn t know which to use  In that case you can use either   git checkout --track origin test   or  git checkout -b test origin test   In 2 19  Git learned the checkout defaultRemote configuration  which specifies a remote to default to when resolving such an ambiguity

User · Answer

In this case  you probably want to create a local test branch which is tracking the remote test branch     git branch test origin test   In earlier versions of git  you needed an explicit --track option  but that is the default now when you are branching off a remote branch

User · Answer

OK  the answer is easy    You basically see the branch  but you don t have a local copy yet      You need to fetch the branch      You can simply fetch and then checkout to the branch  use the one line command below to do that   git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout test   I also created the image below for you to share the differences  look at how fetch works and also how it s different to pull

User · Answer

To get newly created branches   git fetch   To switch into another branch  git checkout BranchName

User · Answer

This will DWIM for a remote not named origin  documentation      git checkout -t remote name remote branch   To add a new remote  you will need to do the following first     git remote add remote name location of remote   git fetch remote name   The first tells Git the remote exists  the second gets the commits

User · Answer

You can start tracking all remote branches with the following Bash script      bin bash git fetch --all for branch in  git branch -r --format    refname short     sed  s origin         do git branch -f --track   branch   origin  branch  done   Here is also a single-line version   git fetch --all  for branch in  git branch -r --format    refname short     sed  s origin        do git branch --track   branch   origin  branch    done

User · Answer

git checkout -b  Branch name    B means Create local branch   git branch --all  git checkout -b  Your Branch name   git branch   successfully checkout from the master branch to dev branch

User · Answer

to get all remote branches use this     git fetch --all   then checkout to the branch    git checkout test

User · Answer

git branch -r says the object name is invalid  because that branch name isn t in Git s local branch list  Update your local branch list from origin with   git remote update   And then try checking out your remote branch again   This worked for me   I believe git fetch pulls in all remote branches  which is not what the original poster wanted

User · Answer

For us  it seems the remote origin fetch configuration gave a problem  Therefore  we could not see any other remote branches than master  so git fetch  --all  did not help  Neither git checkout mybranch nor git checkout -b mybranch --track origin mybranch did work  although it certainly was at remote    The previous configuration only allowed master to be fetched     git config --list   grep fetch remote origin fetch  refs heads master refs remotes origin master   Fix it by using   and fetch the new information from origin     git config remote origin fetch   refs heads   refs remotes origin       git fetch         new branch            Now we could git checkout the remote branch locally   No idea how this config ended up in our local repo

User · Answer

git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout your-branch-name

User · Answer

I was stuck in a situation seeing error  pathspec  desired-branch  did not match any file s  known to git  for all of the suggestions above  I m on git version 1 8 3 1     So this worked for me     git fetch origin desired-branch git checkout -b desired-branch FETCH HEAD   The explanation behind is that I ve noticed that when fetching the remote branch  it was fetched to FETCH HEAD     git fetch origin desired-branch From github com MYTEAM my-repo       branch            desired-branch - gt  FETCH HEAD

User · Answer

I use the following command   git checkout --track origin other remote branch

User · Answer

Accepted answer not working for you   While the first and selected answer is technically correct  there s the possibility you have not yet retrieved all objects and refs from the remote repository  If that is the case  you ll receive the following error     git checkout -b remote branch origin remote branch      fatal  git checkout  updating paths is incompatible with switching branches    Did you intend to checkout  origin remote branch  which can not be resolved as commit    Solution  If you receive this message  you must first do a git fetch origin where origin is the name of the remote repository prior to running git checkout remote branch  Here s a full example with responses     git fetch origin remote  Counting objects  140  done  remote  Compressing objects  100   30 30   done  remote  Total 69  delta 36   reused 66  delta 33  Unpacking objects  100   69 69   done  From https   github com githubuser repo-name    e6ef1e0  5029161  develop    - gt  origin develop     new branch       demo       - gt  origin demo    d80f8d7  359eab0  master     - gt  origin master    git checkout demo Branch demo set up to track remote branch demo from origin  Switched to a new branch  demo    As you can see  running git fetch origin retrieved any remote branches we were not yet setup to track on our local machine  From there  since we now have a ref to the remote branch  we can simply run git checkout remote branch and we ll gain the benefits of remote tracking

User · Answer

Just run these two commands and you should be good to go  git checkout  lt branch-name gt  git pull origin  lt branch-name gt

User · Answer

To clone a Git repository  do  git clone  lt either ssh url  http url gt   The above command checks out all of the branches  but only the master branch will be initialized  If you want to checkout the other branches  do  git checkout -t origin future branch  for example   This command checks out the remote branch  and your local branch name will be same as the remote branch  If you want to override your local branch name on checkout  git checkout -t -b enhancement origin future branch  Now your local branch name is enhancement  but your remote branch name is future branch

User · Answer

Fetch from the remote and checkout the branch   git fetch  lt remote name gt   amp  amp  git checkout  lt branch name gt     E g       git fetch origin  amp  amp  git checkout feature XYZ-1234-Add-alerts

User · Answer

Please follow the command to create an empty folder  Enter that and use this command   saifurs-Mini YO-iOS saifurrahman  git clone your project url Cloning into  iPhoneV1     remote  Counting objects  34230  done  remote  Compressing objects  100   24028 24028   done  remote  Total 34230  delta 22212   reused 15340  delta 9324  Receiving objects  100   34230 34230   202 53 MiB   294 00 KiB s  done  Resolving deltas  100   22212 22212   done  Checking connectivity    done  saifurs-Mini YO-iOS saifurrahman  cd iPhoneV1  saifurs-Mini iPhoneV1 saifurrahman  git checkout 1 4 0 content discovery Branch 1 4 0 content discovery set up to track remote branch 1 4 0 content discovery from origin  Switched to a new branch  1 4 0 content discovery

User · Answer

Use   git checkout -b  lt BRANCH-NAME gt   lt REMOTE-NAME gt   lt BRANCH-NAME gt    Other answers do not work with modern Git in my benign case  You might need to pull first if the remote branch is new  but I haven t checked that case

User · Answer

You can try  git fetch remote git checkout --track -b local branch name origin branch name   or  git fetch git checkout -b local branch name origin branch name

User · Answer

none of these answers worked for me  this worked    git checkout -b feature branch remotes origin feature branch

User · Answer

If the branch is on something other than the origin remote I like to do the following     git fetch   git checkout -b second next upstream next   This will checkout the next branch on the upstream remote in to a local branch called second next  Which means if you already have a local branch named next it will not conflict     git branch -a   second next   remotes origin next   remotes upstream next

User · Answer

With One Remote Jakub s answer actually improves on this  With Git versions   1 6 6  with only one remote  you can do  git fetch git checkout test  As user masukomi points out in a comment  git checkout test will NOT work in modern git if you have multiple remotes  In this case use git checkout -b test  lt name of remote gt  test  or the shorthand git checkout -t  lt name of remote gt  test  With  gt 1 Remotes Before you can start working locally on a remote branch  you need to fetch it as called out in answers below  To fetch a branch  you simply need to  git fetch origin  This will fetch all of the remote branches for you  You can see the branches available for checkout with  git branch -v -a  With the remote branches in hand  you now  need to check out the branch you are interested in  giving you a local working copy  git checkout -b test origin test

User · Answer

I tried the above solution  but it didn t work  Try this  it works   git fetch origin  remote branch   local branch name    This will fetch the remote branch and create a new local branch  if not exists already  with name local branch name and track the remote one in it

User · Answer

Commands  git fetch --all git checkout -b  lt ur new local branch name gt  origin  lt Remote Branch Name gt    are equal to   git fetch --all   and then   git checkout -b fixes for dev origin development   Both will create a latest fixes for dev from development

User · Answer

I used that one  git fetch origin git reset --hard origin  branchname

User · Answer

There are many alternatives  for example    Alternative 1   git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout test      It s the most simple way   Alternative 2   git fetch git checkout test      It s the same but in two steeps

User · Answer

Other guys and gals give the solutions  but maybe I can tell you why      git checkout test which does nothing   Does nothing doesn t equal doesn t work  so I guess when you type  git checkout test  in your terminal and press enter key  no message appears and no error occurs  Am I right   If the answer is  yes   I can tell you the cause   The cause is that there is a file  or folder  named  test  in your work tree   When git checkout xxx parsed    Git looks on xxx as a branch name at first  but there isn t any branch named test  Then Git thinks xxx is a path  and fortunately  or unfortunately   there is a file named test  So git checkout xxx means discard any modification in xxx file  If there isn t file named xxx either  then Git will try to create the xxx according to some rules  One of the rules is create a branch named xxx if remotes origin xxx exists

[git] How do I check out a remote Git branch?

** EDIT (by editor not author) **

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-checkout

Examples related to remote-branch