Of course, you can also specify a different local branch name with like this: $ git checkout -b / Not specifying a local branch name will use the same name as the remote branch. Then to checkout the branch you want, and to tell Git to track it to the remote branch via the -t argument, use the following command: $ git checkout -t / If you have, then you can simply use one of the checkout commands detailed here. Using git fetch without any parameters like this will retrieve all branches from the remote repo, but if you have multiple remote repos then you should specify which one to retrieve from: $ git fetch īut of course, fetch is only needed if you haven't retrieved updates from the remote recently. The following commands assume you only have one remote repo for your repository: $ git fetch $ git checkout Second, you'll want to actually check it out so your working directory contains the branch files. First, you need to fetch the actual branch data, which includes the commits, files, references, etc. If you want to create a new branch to retain commits youĭo so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again.In order to checkout a branch from a remote repository, you will have to perform two steps. State without impacting any branches by performing another checkout. You can look around, make experimentalĬhanges and commit them, and you can discard any commits Sometimes you may suffer from detached HEAD problems: $ git checkout origin/master If you want to only see how the file looks like in remote-tracking branch, use ' git show origin:path/to/file'. to have in working directory version of file as it is in remote-tracking branch), you can simply use the 'pathspec' form of git-checkout, namely ' git checkout origin - file'. Note that -hard means here to force overwrite of working directory, so any uncomitted changes would be lost! Use with care.įinally if you want to check out single file from remote-tracking branch (i.e. You can also force your local branch to rewind to state of remote-tracking branch with ' git reset -hard origin'.

You can think of ' git pull' here as of very, very rough equivalent of ' svn update'. If there were no changes in remote, it is 'up to date' state and your local branch would not change if there were no changes in your local branch but were in remote, then local branch is simply advanced to the state of remote-tracking branch, which is called 'fast-forward'. Then simple ' git pull' when on branch master would fetch (if needed), and try to merge your local changes with the changes in respective branch in remote repository. Note that git-clone automatically sets up such local branch (usually master) for the default branch ( origin/HEAD) of remote origin (usually origin/master), so you wouldn't have to do this. If you use ' git checkout -track origin/master' would create local branch master, which is meant to follow (track) remote-tracking branch origin/master. This is a good solution if you only want to see / browse remote-tracking branch state. Therefore simple ' git checkout origin' (assuming that remote is called origin), which is shortcut for ' git checkout origin/HEAD', which is usually ' git checkout origin/master' would checkout a state of remote-tracking branch into unnamed branch, so called detached HEAD. You can't create commits directly on remote-tracking branches, as they are meant to follow branches of remote repository (and you would lose your work on fetch). In Git you can create new commit only on top of some local branch. In Git you checkout a branch (although you can checkout a file version from some branch to working directory too, it is less commkon operation). Second, Git operates (as Novelocrat wrote) on whole tree level (all files in repository). There isn't such thing like 'HEAD of branch' HEAD is a pointer to branch (or sometimes to a commit). First, a note: remote repository can have more than one branch also HEAD means (for local development and local branches) currently checked out branch, and for remote the remote-tracking branch (symbolic reference) remote/HEAD means default branch on remote.

Git checkout remote branch and track