Track a new remote branch created on GitHub

Question

I have already got a local master branch tracking the remote master branch of a github project. Now, a collaborator of mine has created a new branch in the same project, and

Answer 1

git fetch
git branch --track branch-name origin/branch-name

First command makes sure you have remote branch in local repository. Second command creates local branch which tracks remote branch. It assumes that your remote name is origin and branch name is branch-name.

--track option is enabled by default for remote branches and you can omit it.

Answer 2

If you don't have an existing local branch, it is truly as simple as:

git fetch
git checkout <remote-branch-name>

For instance if you fetch and there is a new remote tracking branch called origin/feature/Main_Page, just do this:

git checkout feature/Main_Page

This creates a local branch with the same name as the remote branch, tracking that remote branch. If you have multiple remotes with the same branch name, you can use the less ambiguous:

git checkout -t <remote>/<remote-branch-name>

If you already made the local branch and don't want to delete it, see How do you make an existing Git branch track a remote branch?.

Answer 3

When the branch is no remote branch you can push your local branch direct to the remote.

git checkout master
git push origin master

or when you have a dev branch

git checkout dev
git push origin dev

or when the remote branch exists

git branch dev -t origin/dev

There are some other posibilites to push a remote branch.

Answer 4

First of all you have to fetch the remote repository:

git fetch remoteName

Than you can create the new branch and set it up to track the remote branch you want:

git checkout -b newLocalBranch remoteName/remoteBranch

You can also use "git branch --track" instead of "git checkout -b" as max specified.

git branch --track newLocalBranch remoteName/remoteBranch