Remote Branches 1

Jan 26, 2024 · 3 min read · git ·

(these posts are part of the material I cover in my devops course)

Create Repositories

Go to your github account anc create a public repository.
(I have created one called demo)
This is just a training session, so you will remove this repository when you're done.
Locally, create a working directory (called demowork), and 2 directories under that:

1mkdir demowork
2cd demowork/
3mkdir a
4mkdir b

Clone your demo repository into a and b:

1cd a/
2clone <your repository url>
3cd ../b/
4clone <your repository url>

Branch feature1

Goto your demo repository in a
Configure your user:

1$ git config user.name "Yuval Shaul"
2$ git config user.email "yuval.shaul@gmail.com"
3$

Check git status:

1cd ../a/demo
2git status

As you can see, you are in the master branch.
In fact, there are no branches created at all.
If you try git branch you'll see no branches. The master you see is just a default name that will be use only if you commit anything.
Go ahead and create another branch and switch to it.
Then create a file, add, commit and try to push:

1git checkout -b feature1
2echo hello > feature1.txt
3git add feature1.txt
4git commit -m "adding file to feature1 in a"
5git push

The last push command fails with something like this:

1fatal: The current branch feature1 has no upstream branch.
2To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use
3
4    git push --set-upstream origin feature1

so we are not tracking a remote branch.

Tracking a remote branch

The push command has many options, but if these are not configured then the current branch is pushed to the corresponding upstream branch.
The problem is that we don't have a current upstream branch, so we have to create one.
We'll push using the suggested upstream configuration:

1git push --set-upstream origin feature1

Now we can see how are local feature1 branch tracks the remote one. Type:

1git branch -vv

Let's repeat everything with another branch called feature2:

1git checkout -b feature2
2echo hello > feature2.txt
3git add feature2.txt 
4git commit -m "first commit for feature2"
5git push --set-upstream origin feature2

Remote Branches

Use the follwing command to inspect all remotes:

1git remote -v show

Try the following to see ALL branches (including remote branches):

1git branch -a

Try this to see only remote branches:

1git branch -r

Add -v to see more details:

1git branch -r -v

Updating info

Go to b/demo and look for branches:

1cd ../../b/demo/
2git branch -a

You should see no brances at all.

You can update by using the git fetch command:

1$> git fetch
2remote: Enumerating objects: 5, done.
3remote: Counting objects: 100% (5/5), done.
4remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
5remote: Total 5 (delta 0), reused 5 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
6Unpacking objects: 100% (5/5), 438 bytes | 438.00 KiB/s, done.
7From github.com:YuvalShaul/demo
8 * [new branch]      feature1   -> origin/feature1
9 * [new branch]      feature2   -> origin/feature2

Let's look that the branches that were updated:

1$> git branch -a
2 remotes/origin/feature1
3 remotes/origin/feature2

Try looking at the log of these remote branches:

1git log remotes/origin/feature1
2git log remotes/origin/feature2

Create a local branch to track the remote one.
See the results:

1git checkout -b feature1 origin/feature1
2git status
3ls

Note that you have switched to the new local branch and that everything is updated from the remote branch.

Now, let's do the same thing differently:

1git branch newbr origin/feature2
2git branch -a
3git checkout newbr 
4ls

Note:
We have created a new branch, set it to track a remote one (where names do not match).
Checking out to the new local branch shows the created files.