Question

How would you accomplish this?

mkdir newbuild
cd newbuild
git init
git remote add origin git+ssh://user@host:22/var/www/vhosts/build
$ git checkout -b origin/mybranch
fatal: You are on a branch yet to be born

Answer 1

What are you trying to do here? You don’t have an origin remote, so you don’t have any remote branches, so you can’t create a local branch based off of one. You need to either clone the remote repository, or add it as your origin remote and then git fetch.

Of course, the error message is completely wrong. Ignore it.