Pull A Git Branch from Remote

Up until lately I have been improperly pulling my remote branches to local. What I mean is I create a new branch locally, push it to remote (GitHub) then pull it onto a designers computer with the following command

(this is not how to do it)

#DON’T DO THIS
git checkout -b < new_branch >
git pull origin < new_branch >

Instead do

git checkout -b < new_branch > origin/< new_branch >

So real world example would be

git checkout -b newdesign origin/newdesign

Obviously ‘newdesign’ is the branch name.

UPDATE:
If you have trouble doing this with an error

fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches/forcing
Did you intend to checkout ‘origin/‘ which can not be resolved as commit?’

Then try a git pull first.

git pull

Posted on July 22, 2009 at 1:56 pm by Jordan Carter · Permalink
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: checkout, git, Pull, Remote Branch

16 Responses

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Written by Pete Andreeson
on July 28, 2009 at 2:13 am
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I don’t understand why the latter is preferred. They appear to do the same thing.
Written by Emerson Vinicius
on March 29, 2010 at 1:24 pm
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Thanks,
This help me
Written by Lucid
on December 10, 2010 at 1:51 am
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best not use angled brackets as placeholders when you explain shell commands.
Written by Anna
on April 2, 2011 at 1:57 am
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Thanks for the update. I got used to git pull *origin branch_name* and couldn’t figure out why I was unable checkout my new remote branch.

git pull, even though it gives me a warning, does the first step of pulling new branch names.
Written by me
on April 7, 2011 at 2:11 am
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thanks, this was the only way I got this working. Sweating real bad now.
Written by max
on August 29, 2011 at 6:58 pm
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Thanks a lot. Do you know how to repull the latest branch?
Written by dele.o
on December 9, 2011 at 5:29 am
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@max
git pull doesn’t just that
Written by mehigh
on April 27, 2012 at 8:50 am
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thank you so much… i do often have to call pull before checkout for this to work since i deal with new branches often
Written by Anna
on July 17, 2012 at 9:52 am
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If git pull doesn’t work, do a “git remote update”.
Written by JamesOR
on July 20, 2012 at 1:42 am
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If you’re getting the ‘updating paths’ error you mention in your post, you might need to perform a ‘git fetch’ on the remote you are trying to pull the new branch from.

git fetch remote_name
git checkout -b branch_name remote_name/branch_name
Written by rowgm
on August 2, 2012 at 2:22 am
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I only have to use git pull, without a branch, and all the rest is done by default by git. Check it out… Just:

git pull

and you can see the others local/remote branches with:
git branch -r

and you are now able to checkout those branches
Written by Piero Campa
on August 2, 2012 at 8:34 pm
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In my case here, git expects a commit instead of a remote branch.. Any clue?

$ git checkout -b /
fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches.
Did you intend to checkout ‘some/path//’ which can not be resolved as commit?
Written by bwanamarko
on August 23, 2012 at 6:03 am
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Much easier to just do:

git checkout -t /

For example …

git checkout -t upstream/dev

… for checking out the “dev” branch from the “upstream” remote.

Credit goes to git ready …
http://gitready.com/intermediate/2009/01/09/checkout-remote-tracked-branch.html
Written by you
on September 25, 2012 at 7:55 pm
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If you see the error described above, and you don’t want to do a “git pull”, you can do a “git remote update” instead.
Written by Git clone a specific branch | Galen Vinter
on September 27, 2012 at 2:54 pm
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[...] $ git clone -b my-branch [email protected]:user/my-project.git local-project-directoryor specifically for me:$ git clone -b dev [email protected]:gvinter/my-project.git MyProject Another way to get to that remote, non-master branch without doing weird pulls/branching is stated here: [...]
Written by JD Isaacks
on March 20, 2013 at 2:21 am
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@ Pete Andreeson
> I don’t understand why the latter is preferred. They appear to do the same thing.

No they don’t, if you have commits in your current branch then run: git checkout -b

the new branch is based on your current branch and you may have just put commits into your local that you did not intend to. Then when you run:

git pull origin you will be automatically merging with the commits form the previous branch.