Question

Most examples of creating remote branches involve pushing from a local branch

Is there a way of creating an empty remote branch without pushing?

Is it also possible to create a local empty branch,check it out then link it to the new also empty remote branch without pushing?

Answer 1

As mentioned in the blog post “Start a New Branch on your Remote Git Repository“:

• Creating a Remote Branch

git push origin origin:refs/heads/new_feature_name

• Make sure everything is up-to-date

git fetch origin

• Then you can see that the branch is created.

git branch -r

This should show ‘origin/new_feature_name’

• Start tracking the new branch

git checkout --track -b new_feature_name origin/new_feature_name

So to declare a remote branch, even one which doesn’t yet exist on the local repository, git push is mandatory.