Question

I’m using Aptana and Git. When I go to create a new branch, the following dialog box shows up.

I was wondering what that ‘track’ checkbox does, and when it’s most appropriate to check it.

I understand the concept of tracking in git, but mostly with files. I don’t seem to understand how it applies to new branches being created?

Answer 1

In this case, track refers to git-checkout’s and git-branch’s --track option.

When a local branch is started off a remote-tracking branch, git sets up the branch so that git pull will appropriately merge from the remote-tracking branch.

From man git-branch:

-t, --track
    When creating a new branch, set up configuration to mark the
    start-point branch as "upstream" from the new branch. This
    configuration will tell git to show the relationship between the
    two branches in git status and git branch -v. Furthermore, it
    directs git pull without arguments to pull from the upstream when
    the new branch is checked out.