Is the branch after “origin” the local branch or the remote branch?

Question

I am trying to learn git but I am confused about one part. Usually I use:

git pull origin branch_A

to fetch the remote branch. Usually my current local branch is branch_A the branch on the remote repository is also branch_A , so I will get the remote/branch_A -> local/branch_A . But what if I want to get remote/branch_B -> local/branch_A what should I do? What is the real meaning of the branch after origin . It means the remote branch or the local branch? Does this command mean fetch default remote branch to local branch_A or fetch remote branch_A to current local branch ?

Answer 1

In the command

git pull origin branch_A

the origin refers to the remote repository which you have configured in Git. So this will pull changes from the remote branch_A into the local branch which is tracking this remote. On the other hand,

git pull origin/branch_A

will pull the changes from the local version of the origin/branch_A branch which was cached last time you did a pull.

If you really want your local branch_A to track remote branch_B then the following command can do the trick:

git checkout -b branch_A origin/branch_B

If you already have a local branch_A tracking something else (such as remote branch_A ) then you will have to kill the branch first and then recreate it.

Answer 2

The branch after the name of the repository is a remote branch.

It is what the doc says git-pull .

You allways pull over the branch that you are in your local repository.

However, there is another possibility, If you have a local branch tracked with a remote branch, then the command means that you will pull in your current branch what is in the remote branch that is pointed by your local branch tracked.