How can I check out a GitHub pull request with git

Question

I'd like to check out a previously created pull request (created via GitHub web interface). I searched and found different places where a refs/pull or refs/pull/pr

But when I add fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/* to the git config file and do a git fetch

What I'm doing wrong? Should GitHub create automatically the pull/xyz stuff, or do I have to configure something?

Answer 1

That gist does describe what happend when you do a git fetch:

Obviously, change the github url to match your project's URL. It ends up looking like this:

[remote "origin"]
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
    url = [e-mail]:joyent/node.git
    fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*

Now fetch all the pull requests:

$ git fetch origin
From github.com:joyent/node
 * [new ref]         refs/pull/1000/head -> origin/pr/1000
 * [new ref]         refs/pull/1002/head -> origin/pr/1002
 * [new ref]         refs/pull/1004/head -> origin/pr/1004
 * [new ref]         refs/pull/1009/head -> origin/pr/1009
...

To check out a particular pull request:

$ git checkout pr/999
Branch pr/999 set up to track remote branch pr/999 from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'pr/999'

You have various scripts listed in issues 259 to automate that task.
The git-extras project proposes the command git-pr (implemented in PR 262)

git-pr(1) -- Checks out a pull request locally

SYNOPSIS

git-pr <number> [<remote>]
git-pr clean

DESCRIPTION

Creates a local branch based on a GitHub pull request number, and switch to that branch afterwards.

The name of the remote to fetch from. Defaults to origin.

EXAMPLES

This checks out the pull request 226 from origin:

$ git pr 226

remote: Counting objects: 12, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
remote: Total 12 (delta 3), reused 9 (delta 3)
Unpacking objects: 100% (12/12), done.
From https://github.com/visionmedia/git-extras
  * [new ref] refs/pull/226/head -> pr/226
Switched to branch 'pr/226'

Answer 2

This will fetch without you having to name a branch:

git pull origin pull/939/head

How do I get a specific pull request on my machine?

Answer 3

For Bitbucket, you need replace the word pull to pull-requests.

First, you can confirm the pull request URL style by git ls-remote origin command.

$ git ls-remote origin |grep pull
f3f40f2ca9509368c959b0b13729dc0ae2fbf2ae    refs/pull-requests/1503/from
da4666bd91eabcc6f2c214e0bbd99d543d94767e    refs/pull-requests/1503/merge
...

As you can see, it is refs/pull-requests/1503/from instead of refs/pull/1503/from

Then you can use the commands of any of the answers.

Answer 4

If you're following the "github fork" workflow, where you create a fork and add the remote upstream repo:

14:47 $ git remote -v
origin  [e-mail]:<yourname>/<repo_name>.git (fetch)
origin  [e-mail]:<yourname>/<repo_name>.git (push)
upstream        [e-mail]:<repo_owrer>/<repo_name>.git (fetch)
upstream        [e-mail]:<repo_owner>/<repo_name>.git (push)

to pull into your current branch your command would look like:

git pull upstream pull/<pull_request_number>/head

to pull into a new branch the code would look like:

git fetch upstream pull/<pull_request_number>/head:newbranch

Answer 5

If their commits are on there master branch of their forked repo, then you could just do the following.

git fetch [e-mail]:<repo_owner>/<repo_name>.git
git checkout FETCH_HEAD

Answer 6

If you are using Github.com, go to "Pull requests", click on the relevant pull request, and then click on the "command line instructions" link: