Question

I have cloned a Git repository and I would like to switch to a particular branch from the following list (e.g., branch1, branch2, branch3).

Should I have to say git fetch origin branch2?

How do I know that I have switched to this particular branch on my local repository?

How do I switch to say ‘branch3’ from ‘branch2’?

Answer 1

Recent versions of git have enough DWIM (“Do What I Mean!”) logic to understand you just doing:

git checkout branch1

… in that situtation. That will work if there is no local branch called branch1, and there’s only one remote-tracking branch that ends with branch1 – in that case it’s equivalent to the longer:

git checkout --track -b branch1 origin/branch1

… which should work in every circumstance.

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I realize that I missed answering some of your later questions. git stores the state of the branches from the origin repository in so-called “remote-tracking branches” – these are the ones that look like origin/master, origin/branch1, origin/branch2, etc. If you want to update all of these from origin just use:

git fetch origin

To see all of your remote-tracking branches, you can use:

git branch -r

The meaning of the full command I quoted above:

git checkout --track -b branch1 origin/branch1

… is:

• create and switch to a new branch called branch1 (the checkout -b branch1 bit)
• start it at origin/branch1 (i.e. base it on the lastest cached state of branch1 from origin)
• and mark origin/branch1 as being “upstream” of branch1 in your git config (the --track bit, although that’s actually implied if the start point is a remote-tracking branch)