Make an existing Git branch track a remote branch?

Question

I know how to make a new branch that tracks remote branches, but how do I make an existing branch track a remote branch?

I know I can just edit the .git/config file, but it seems there should be an easier way.

Answer 1

You might find the git_remote_branch tool useful. It offers simple commands for creating, publishing, deleting, tracking & renaming remote branches. One nice feature is that you can ask a grb command to explain what git commands it would execute.

grb explain create my_branch github
# git_remote_branch version 0.3.0

# List of operations to do to create a new remote branch and track it locally:
git push github master:refs/heads/my_branch
git fetch github
git branch --track my_branch github/my_branch
git checkout my_branch

Answer 2

Here, using github and git version 2.1.4, just do:

$ git clone [e-mail]:user/repo.git

And remotes come by itelsef, even if not linked locally:

$ git remote show origin

* remote origin
  Fetch URL: [e-mail]:user/repo.git
  Push  URL: [e-mail]:user/repo.git
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    develop tracked         <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
    master  tracked
  Local branch configured for 'git pull':
    master merges with remote master
  Local ref configured for 'git push':
    master pushes to master (up to date)

But of course, still no local branch:

$ git branch
* master                  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

See? Now if you just checkout develp, it will do the magic automatically:

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

So easy!

---

Summary. Just run this 2 commands:

$ git clone [e-mail]:user/repo.git
$ git checkout develop

Answer 3

I do this as a side-effect of pushing with the -u option as in

$ git push -u origin branch-name

The equivalent long option is --set-upstream.

The git-branch command also understands --set-upstream, but its use can be confusing. Version 1.8.0 modifies the interface.

git branch --set-upstream is deprecated and may be removed in a relatively distant future. git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to] has been introduced with a saner order of arguments.

…

It was tempting to say git branch --set-upstream origin/master, but that tells Git to arrange the local branch "origin/master" to integrate with the currently checked out branch, which is highly unlikely what the user meant. The option is deprecated; use the new --set-upstream-to (with a short-and-sweet -u) option instead.

Say you have a local foo branch and want it to treat the branch by the same name as its upstream. Make this happen with

$ git branch foo
$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/foo

or just

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/foo foo

Answer 4

This isn't a direct answer to this question, but I wanted to leave a note here for anyone who may be having the same issue as me when trying to configure an upstream branch.

Be wary of push.default.

With older git versions, the default was matching, which would cause very undesirable behaviour if you have, for example:

Local branch "master" tracking to origin/master

Remote branch "upstream" tracking to upstream/master

If you tried to "git push" when on the "upstream" branch, with push.default matching git would automatically try to merge the local branch "master" into "upstream/master", causing a whole lot of chaos.

This gives more sane behaviour:

git config --global push.default upstream

Answer 5

For creating new branch, we could use following command

 git checkout --track -b example origin/example 

For the already created branch to create link between remote then from that branch use below command

 git branch -u origin/remote-branch-name

Answer 6

Actually for the accepted answer to work:

git remote add upstream <remote-url>
git fetch upstream
git branch -f --track qa upstream/qa
# OR:
git branch --set-upstream qa upstream/qa