How do I check out a remote Git branch?

Question

Somebody pushed a branch called test with git push origin test to a shared repository. I can see the branch with git branch -r.

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Answer 1

This will DWIM for a remote not named origin (documentation):

$ git checkout -t remote_name/remote_branch

To add a new remote, you will need to do the following first:

$ git remote add remote_name location_of_remote
$ git fetch remote_name

The first tells Git the remote exists, the second gets the commits.