Branches in a remote can be replicated in the local repo, and maintained in sync with each other.
Sometimes we need to create a local copy of a branch from a remote repository, make further changes to it, and keep it synchronised with the remote branch. Let's explore how to handle this in a few common use cases:
Use case 1: Working with branches that already existed in the remote repo when you cloned it to your computer.
When you clone a repository,
- Git checks out the default branch. You can start working on this branch immediately. This branch is tracking the default branch in the remote, which means you easily synchronise changes in this branch with the remote by pulling and pushing.
- Git also fetches all the other branches from the remote. These other branches are not immediately available as local branches, but they are visible as remote-tracking branches.
You can think of remote-tracking branches as read-only references to the state of those branches in the remote repository at the time of cloning. They allow you to see what work has been done on those branches without yet making local copies of them.
To work on one of these branches, you can create a new local branch based on the remote-tracking branch. Once you do this, your local branch will usually be configured to track the corresponding branch on the remote, so you can easily synchronise your work later.
This hands-on practical uses the same samplerepo-company repo you used in Lesson: Pushing Branches to a Remote. Fork and clone it if you haven't done that already.
1 Verify that the remote-tracking branch origin/track-sales exists in the local repo, but there is no local copy of it.
You can use the git branch -a command to list all local and tracking branches.
git branch -a
* hiring
master
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/hiring
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/track-sales
The * in the output above indicates the currently active branch.
Note how there is no track-sales in the list of branches (i.e., no local branch named track-sales), but there is a remotes/origin/track-sales (i.e., the remote-tracking branch)
Observe how the branch track-sales appear under REMOTES → origin but not under BRANCHES.
2 Create a local copy of the remote branch origin/track-sales.
You can use the git switch -c <branch> <remote-branch> command for this e.g.,
git switch -c track-sales origin/track-sales
Locate the track-sales remote-tracking branch (look under REMOTES → origin), right-click, and choose Checkout....
In the next dialog, choose as follows:
The above command/action does several things:
- Creates a new branch
track-sales. - Sets the new branch to track the remote branch
origin/track-sales, which means the local branch reftrack-saleswill also move to where theorigin/track-salesis. - Switch to the newly-created branch i.e., makes it the current branch.
3 Add a commit to the track-sales branch and push to the remote, to verify that the local branch is tracking the remote branch.
Commands to perform this step in one shot:
echo "5 reams of paper" >> sales.txt
git commit -am "Update sales.txt"
git push origin track-sales
Use case 2: Working with branches that were added to the remote repository after you cloned it e.g., a branch someone else pushed to the remote after you cloned.
Simply fetch to update your local repository with information about the new branch. After that, you can create a local copy of it and work with it just as you did in Use Case 1.