Question

I’m new to git and am wrapping my head around how I’m supposed to be using git and egit. From the egit tutorial, I have setup a respository on GitHub, pushed my Eclipse projects to the remote GitHub repository from my local workspace, I can push changes to GitHub, switch branches, see the updates on GitHub, etc. This all makes sense.

Looking at the Git Repository explorer, I have a listing of “Local” branches and have no “Remote Tracking” branches and I have no “Remotes” listed. When I create a branch from a local branch, the egit dialog indicates “You are creating a branch based on a local branch” and suggests that I should be making a branch from a remote tracking branch.

So my question is, am I correctly using egit?

Should I just continue pushing changes to the remote GitHub repository? If so, what happens once I share the project and other developers clone the repository and start making changes to the remote repository?

Or should I now ditch the local repository and setup a new remote repository by cloning the existing GitHub repository that I initially created from my workspace?

Or do I create a new Push and Fetch “Remote” for my existing git repository?

Or something else?

Confused.

Answer 1

The “Branching” section of the Egit User Guide can help:

There is no obligation to create a local branch which would be named like a remote tracking branch (see “Having a hard time understanding git-fetch” to have a good understanding of “remote tracing branches).

You can create as many local branches (i.e. branches that you won’t necessary push anywhere) as you want/need.

But if you don”t see any remote branch, maybe you didn’t fetch that GitHub repo in the first place: see Fetching.