“Cannot update paths and switch to branch at the same time”

Question

I sometimes use the checkout -b option to create a new branch, check it out at the same time and set up tracking in one command.

In a new environment, I

Answer 1

You could follow these steps when you stumble upon this issue:

1. Run the following command to list the branches known for your local repository.

git remote show origin

which outputs this:

 remote origin
  Fetch URL: 
  Push  URL: 
  HEAD branch: development
  Remote branches:
    development                             tracked
    Feature2                                tracked
    master                                  tracked
    refs/remotes/origin/Feature1         stale (use 'git remote prune' to remove)
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    Feature2     merges with remote Feature2
    development  merges with remote development
    master       merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    Feature2     pushes to Feature2     (up to date)
    development  pushes to development (up to date)
    master       pushes to master      (local out of date)

2. After verifying the details like (fetch URL, etc), run this command to fetch any new branch(i.e. which you may want to checkout in your local repo) that exist in the remote but not in your local.

» git remote update

Fetching origin
From gitlab.domain.local:ProjectGroupName/ProjectName
 * [new branch]      Feature3    -> Feature3

As you can see the new branch has been fetched from remote.
3. Finally, checkout the branch with this command

» git checkout -b Feature3 origin/Feature3

Branch Feature3 set up to track remote branch Feature3 from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'Feature3'

It is not necessary to explicitly tell Git to track(using --track) the branch with remote.

The above command will set the local branch to track the remote branch from origin.