Clone from a branch other than master

Question

I am trying to pull from a repository in Github. But I don\'t want to clone the master branch. I want to clone some other branch. When I try git clone ,

Answer 1

use git clone --branch <name> possibly adding --single-branch

as usual you have git clone --help to read details on commands

Answer 2

Try this:

git init
git fetch url-to-repo branchname:refs/remotes/origin/branchname

EDIT

A better solution:

git clone -b mybranch --single-branch git://sub.domain.com/repo.git

Answer 3

git clone <url>

clones and creates remote-tracking branches for each branch. If you want to see available branches (after cloning), you type

git branch -l

To switch to a particular branch after cloning you do:

git checkout <branchname>

where branchname is the name of the branch :)

If you want to clone and checkout a specific branch you do

git clone -b <branchname> <url>

The other commands you mention are for "updating" your current working copy. git pull gets all changes from the remote repository and merges them while git fetchonly gets them without merging.

Answer 4

If you already cloned the repo and want to contribute to the branch other than master, do this:

$ git checkout --track origin/<branch-name>

---

Of course, be sure to specify the right name of the remote (origin in the example above)

This command will create a new local branch that will track a particular remote branch.