Track all remote git branches as local branches

Question

Tracking a single remote branch as a local branch is straightforward enough.

$ git checkout --track -b ${branch_name} origin/${branch_name}

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Answer 1

Most of the answers here are over complicating the parsing of the output of git branch -r. You can use the following for loop to create the tracking branches against all the branches on the remote like so.

Example

Say I have these remote branches.

$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/development
  origin/integration
  origin/master
  origin/production
  origin/staging

Confirm that we're not tracking anything other than master already, locally:

$ git branch -l    # or using just git branch
* master

You can use this one liner to create the tracking branches:

$ for i in $(git branch -r | grep -vE "HEAD|master"); do 
    git branch --track ${i#*/} $i; done
Branch development set up to track remote branch development from origin.
Branch integration set up to track remote branch integration from origin.
Branch production set up to track remote branch production from origin.
Branch staging set up to track remote branch staging from origin.

Now confirm:

$ git branch
  development
  integration
* master
  production
  staging

To delete them:

$ git br -D production development integration staging 
Deleted branch production (was xxxxx).
Deleted branch development (was xxxxx).
Deleted branch integration (was xxxxx).
Deleted branch staging (was xxxxx).

If you use the -vv switch to git branch you can confirm:

$ git br -vv
  development xxxxx [origin/development] commit log msg ....
  integration xxxxx [origin/integration] commit log msg ....
* master      xxxxx [origin/master] commit log msg ....
  production  xxxxx [origin/production] commit log msg ....
  staging     xxxxx [origin/staging] commit log msg ....

Breakdown of for loop

The loop basically calls the command git branch -r, filtering out any HEAD or master branches in the output using grep -vE "HEAD|master". To get the names of just the branches minus the origin/ substring we use Bash's string manipulation ${var#stringtoremove}. This will remove the string, "stringtoremove" from the variable $var. In our case we're removing the string origin/ from the variable $i.

NOTE: Alternatively you can use git checkout --track ... to do this as well:

$ for i in $(git branch -r | grep -vE "HEAD|master" | sed 's/^[ ]\+//'); do 
    git checkout --track $i; done

But I don't particularly care for this method, since it's switching you among the branches as it performs a checkout. When done it'll leave you on the last branch that it created.

References

• 10.1. Manipulating Strings - Advanced Bash Scripting Guide
• 3.5 Git Branching - Remote Branches