How to fetch all Git branches

Question

I cloned a Git repository, which contains about five branches. However, when I do git branch I only see one of them:

$ git branch
* master
         


        

Answer 1

I wrote a little script to manage cloning a new repo and making local branches for all the remote branches.

You can find the latest version here:

#!/bin/bash

# Clones as usual but creates local tracking branches for all remote branches.
# To use, copy this file into the same directory your git binaries are (git, git-flow, git-subtree, etc)

clone_output=$((git clone "$@" ) 2>&1)
retval=$?
echo $clone_output
if [[ $retval != 0 ]] ; then
    exit 1
fi
pushd $(echo $clone_output | head -1 | sed 's/Cloning into .\(.*\).\.\.\./\1/') > /dev/null 2>&1
this_branch=$(git branch | sed 's/^..//')
for i in $(git branch -r | grep -v HEAD); do
  branch=$(echo $i | perl -pe 's/^.*?\///')
  # this doesn't have to be done for each branch, but that's how I did it.
  remote=$(echo $i | sed 's/\/.*//')
  if [[ "$this_branch" != "$branch" ]]; then
      git branch -t $branch $remote/$branch
  fi
done
popd > /dev/null 2>&1

To use it, just copy it into your git bin directory (for me, that’s C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\git-cloneall), then, on the command line:

git cloneall [standard-clone-options] 

It clones as usual, but creates local tracking branches for all remote branches.