Is “refs/heads/master” same as “refs/remotes/origin/master” in Git?

Question

The question is simple: is refs/heads/master the same thing as refs/remotes/origin/master? If it is not in some cases, how can I know when it is not an

Answer 1

They are two different symbolic names that can point to different things. refs/heads/master is a branch in your working copy named master. Frequently that is a tracking branch of refs/remotes/origin/master because origin is the default name for the remote created by git clone and its primary branch is usually also named master.

You can see the difference between them with git rev-list refs/heads/master..refs/remotes/origin/master which will be empty if they are the same and will otherwise list the commits between them.

Answer 2

The key difference to understand is that the branches under refs/heads/ are branches that, when you have one checked out, you can advance by creating new commits. Those under refs/remotes/, however, are so-called "remote-tracking branches" - these refs just point to the commit that a remote repository was at the last time you did a git fetch <name-of-remote>, or a successful git push to the corresponding branch in that remote repository. (I wrote a blog post that talks about this difference at some length here.)