How to clone all remote branches in Git?
First, clone a remote Git repository and cd into it:
$ git clone git://example.com/myproject $ cd myproject
Next, look at the local branches in your repository:
$ git branch * master
But there are other branches hiding in your repository! You can see these using the -a flag:
$ git branch -a * master remotes/origin/HEAD remotes/origin/master remotes/origin/v1.0-stable remotes/origin/experimental
If you just want to take a quick peek at an upstream branch, you can check it out directly:
$ git checkout origin/experimental
But if you want to work on that branch, you'll need to create a local tracking branch which is done automatically by:
$ git checkout experimental
and you will see
Branch experimental set up to track remote branch experimental from origin. Switched to a new branch 'experimental'
That last line throws some people: "New branch" - huh? What it really means is that the branch is taken from the index and created locally for you. The previous line is actually more informative as it tells you that the branch is being set up to track the remote branch, which usually means the origin/branch_name branch
Now, if you look at your local branches, this is what you'll see:
$ git branch * experimental master
You can actually track more than one remote repository using git remote.
$ git remote add win32 git://example.com/users/joe/myproject-win32-port $ git branch -a * master remotes/origin/HEAD remotes/origin/master remotes/origin/v1.0-stable remotes/origin/experimental remotes/win32/master remotes/win32/new-widgets
At this point, things are getting pretty crazy, so run gitk to see what's going on:
$ gitk --all &