Question

This is my understanding of Git:-

If I clone a repository then I initially only get a copy of the master branch. I can then indicate that I want to track a remote branch using git checkout with the -b flag. This works as expected.

So my question is how do you get Git to tell you this information. If I type git branch -a then it shows me a mixed list of all the branches e.g.

* master
  mybranch
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/mybranch

What I want to know is other than maintaining the same name, how can I tell what local branches are tracking what remote ones?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If I clone a repository then I initially only get a copy of the master branch. I can then indicate that I want to track a remote branch using git checkout with the -b flag. This works as expected.

In fact, git checkout -b ... is what you use to create a new branch. If you simply want to check out a branch that already exists in the remote, you don’t need -b. For example, here I’m creating a local branch that tracks remotes/origin/folder-hack:

$ git checkout folder-hack
Branch folder-hack set up to track remote branch folder-hack from amdragon.
Switched to a new branch 'folder-hack'

What I want to know is other than maintaining the same name, how can I tell what local branches are tracking what remote ones?

Each branch has a corresponding configuration in .git/config. You can find the remote associated with a branch by looking at branch.<BRANCHNAME>.remote, and you can find the name of the remote branch by looking at branch.<BRANCHNAME>.merge. So, from my previous example:

$ git config --get branch.folder-hack.remote
amdragon
$ git config --get branch.folder-hack.merge
refs/heads/folder-hack

You can just run git config --list and look at the branch... lines.