How do I fetch a branch on someone else's fork

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How to pull remote branch from somebody else's repo 6 answers

I've forked from a repo on GitHub. I want to get the code from a branch on another user's fork.

Must I clone this user's whole repo to a separate local repo or can I do something like git checkout link_to_the_other_users_branch?

Answer 1

$ git remote add theirusername [e-mail]:theirusername/reponame.git
$ git fetch theirusername
$ git checkout -b mynamefortheirbranch theirusername/theirbranch

Note that there are multiple "correct" URIs you can use for the remote when you add it in the first step.

• [e-mail]:theirusername/reponame.git is an SSH-based URI
• https://github.com/theirusername/reponame.git is an HTTP URI

Which one you prefer to use will depend on your situation: GitHub has a help article explaining the difference and helping you choose: Which remote URL should I use?

Answer 2

amalloy's suggestion didn't work for me. This did:

git remote add theirusername https://github.com/theirusername/reponame
git fetch theirusername
git checkout -b mynamefortheirbranch theirusername/theirbranch

Resources:

• https://git-scm.com/book/ch2-5.html
• http://crunchify.com/how-to-fork-github-repository-create-pull-request-and-merge/