Introduction

In this tutorial we are going to explain an important concept when using Git. In particular we will try to show you the difference between local branch and remote branches.

Git is distribuited and it could have several remote branches.

We will try to explain more than one alternative how to checkout remote branches.

Context

Supose there is a pushed a branch called test which was created with git push origin test to a shared repository.

You can use git branch -r to verify that the remote git branches exists.

Solution 1: Fetching and checkout

To use the remote branch test you can just do:

git fetch 
git checkout test

Important: git checkout test will NOT work in newer git if you have multiple remotes. If you are using a newer git version try:

git checkout -b test origin/test

Solution 2: Alternative way of fetching and checkout

To fetch a branch, you simply need to:

git fetch origin 

This will fetch all of the remote branches for you. You can see the branches available for checkout with:

git branch -v -a 

With the remote branches in hand, you now need to check out the branch you are interested in, giving you a local working copy: git checkout -b test origin/test

Create a local branch and fetch

In this case, you need to create a local test branch which will track the remote test branch:

$ git branch test origin/test 

Common Error: fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches

If you are trying to checkout a remote branch using -b and from origin you could get the following error:

$ git checkout -b remote_branch origin/remote_branch 
fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches. 
Did you intend to checkout 'origin/remote_branch' 

If you receive this message, you must first do a:

git fetch origin
git checkout
remote_branch