When you clone a repository, all the information of the branches is actually downloaded, but the branches are hidden. Once you've created a local branch, you can see it with git branch (remember, you don't need -a to see local branches).Īll the answers I saw here were valid, but there is a much cleaner way to clone a repository and to pull all the branches at once. In this example, branchone is the name of a local branch you're creating based on origin/branchone if you instead want to create local branches with different names, you can do this: git branch localbranchname origin/branchone Git branch branchthree origin/branchthree To simply create local branches from remote branches (without checking them out and thereby changing the contents of your working directory), you can do that like this: git branch branchone origin/branchone If you actually want to work on a branch, you'll probably want a 'local' version of it. Git branch -a shows all branches, including remote branches. By default, git branch only shows local branches, which is why you only see 'master'. There's one exception to this, which is that the cloning process creates a local branch called 'master' from the remote branch called 'master'. Git clone downloads all remote branches but still considers them 'remote', even though the files are located in your new repository.

You can track more than one remote repository using git remote: $ git remote add win32 git:///users/joe/myproject-win32-portĪt this point, things are getting pretty crazy, so run gitk to see what's going on: $ gitk -all & Your local branches should now show: $ git branch As the previous line tells you, the branch is being set up to track the remote branch, which usually means the origin/branch_name branch. Here, 'new branch' simply means that the branch is taken from the index and created locally for you. To work on that branch, create a local tracking branch, which is done automatically by: $ git checkout experimentalīranch experimental set up to track remote branch experimental from origin. To take a quick peek at an upstream branch, check it out directly: $ git checkout origin/experimental Next, look at the local branches in your repository: $ git branchīut there are other branches hiding in your repository! See these using the -a flag: $ git branch -a First, clone a remote Git repository and cd into it: $ git clone git:///myproject

Git clone command with branch name