Git – Tracking Remote Branches with Existing Branches

git

My usual workflow when working with git, is something like this:

create a local repository
do some work in that repository, add/change files etc.
decide that I want a central remote location for the repository, and create one
push all the commits from my local repository to this new remote repository

Now, however, I want to be able to push and pull from this remote repository without having to specify where I'm pushing to or pulling from; I want my local master to track the remote master.

The proper way to do this isn't clear to me, and I've been unable to determine it from the documentation, even though it shouldn't really be more than one command.

Because it's something that's only ever done once per repository, I've generally employed one of two simple, but hacky, solutions:

used git clone to make a new local repository, and deleted the old one. After git cloning, the new repository is setup to track the origin.
manually edited .git/config to make master track origin.

I think I should be able to run a command, probably some form of git remote to setup an existing repository to have master track a remote master. Can anyone tell me what that command is?

Best Answer

Use the set-upstream arg:

git branch --set-upstream local-branch-name origin/remote-branch-name

Running the above command updates your .git/config file correctly and even verifies with this output:

"Branch local-branch-name set up to track remote branch remote-branch-name from origin."

EDIT: As martijn said: "In version Git v1.8.0, --set-upstream is deprecated. Use --set-upstream-to instead."

git branch --set-upstream-to local-branch-name origin/remote-branch-name

See this for more information.

Related Solutions

Git – Track All Remote Branches as Local Branches

The answer given by Otto is good, but all the created branches will have "origin/" as the start of the name. If you just want the last part (after the last /) to be your resulting branch names, use this:

for remote in `git branch -r | grep -v /HEAD`; do git checkout --track $remote ; done

It also has the benefit of not giving you any warnings about ambiguous refs.

Git Branch Tracking – How to Make Existing Branch Track Remote

Given a branch foo and a remote upstream:

As of Git 1.8.0:

git branch -u upstream/foo

Or, if local branch foo is not the current branch:

git branch -u upstream/foo foo

Or, if you like to type longer commands, these are equivalent to the above two:

git branch --set-upstream-to=upstream/foo

git branch --set-upstream-to=upstream/foo foo

As of Git 1.7.0 (before 1.8.0):

git branch --set-upstream foo upstream/foo

Notes:

All of the above commands will cause local branch foo to track remote branch foo from remote upstream.
The old (1.7.x) syntax is deprecated in favor of the new (1.8+) syntax. The new syntax is intended to be more intuitive and easier to remember.
Defining an upstream branch will fail when run against newly-created remotes that have not already been fetched. In that case, run git fetch upstream beforehand.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Git – Track All Remote Branches as Local Branches

Git Branch Tracking – How to Make Existing Branch Track Remote

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