Track all remote git branches as local branches

Janson_47532 0
Viewed 90390

Tracking a single remote branch as a local branch is straightforward enough. 

$ git checkout --track -b ${branch_name} origin/${branch_name}

Pushing all local branches up to the remote, creating new remote branches as needed is also easy.

$ git push --all origin

I want to do the reverse. If I have X number of remote branches at a single source: 

$ git branch -r 
branch1
branch2
branch3
.
.
.

Can I create local tracking branches for all those remote branches without needed to manually create each one? Say something like:

$ git checkout --track -b --all origin

I've googled and RTMs, but have come up bunk thus far.

branch git
16 Answers

Using bash:

after git 1.9.1 
for i in `git branch -a | grep remote | grep -v HEAD | grep -v master`; do git branch --track ${i#remotes/origin/} $i; done

credits: Val Blant, elias, and Hugo

before git 1.9.1

Note: the following code if used in later versions of git (>v1.9.1) causes

  1. (bug) All created branches to track master
  2. (annoyance) All created local branch names to be prefixed with origin/
for remote in `git branch -r `; do git branch --track $remote; done

Update the branches, assuming there are no changes on your local tracking branches:

for remote in `git branch -r `; do git checkout $remote ; git pull; done

Ignore the ambiguous refname warnings, git seems to prefer the local branch as it should.

Otto_95940

You could script that easily enough, but I don't know when it'd be valuable. Those branches would pretty quickly fall behind, and you'd have to update them all the time.

The remote branches are automatically going to be kept up to date, so it's easiest just to create the local branch at the point where you actually want to work on it.

Dustin_399750

From git 2.23 onwards:

for branch in `git branch -r | grep origin/`; do git switch -t -C ${branch#origin/} $branch; git pull; done

The -C flag for git switch creates or resets if it already exists.

git switch documentation

user_25947420

Using bash, If you want to checkout all branches:

for remote in `git branch -r`; do git checkout $(echo $remote | cut -d'/' -f 2); done

It’s important to note that when you do a fetch that brings down new remote-tracking branches, you don’t automatically have local, editable copies of them.

user_43347370

VonC's solution can be simplified even further by changing the sed (I lack the rep points to comment directly on his post):

for branch in $(git branch -r | sed 's,[^/]*/,,g'); do git switch $branch; done

By replacing everything that isn't a slash up to the final slash, the remaining branch name is suitable for local use; repeatedly switching to the same branch isn't an error (it may be inefficient, but it may be more efficient than having a grep in the pipe :->).

The switch command is smart enough to track each remote branch as necessary.

user_105594870
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