Make an existing Git branch track a remote branch?

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.

Given a branch foo and a remote upstream:

As of Git 1.8.0:

git branch -u upstream/foo

Or, if local branch foo is not the current branch:

git branch -u upstream/foo foo

Or, if you like to type longer commands, these are equivalent to the above two:

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

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

As of Git 1.7.0 (before 1.8.0):

git branch --set-upstream foo upstream/foo

Notes:

• All of the above commands will cause local branch foo to track remote branch foo from remote upstream.
• The old (1.7.x) syntax is deprecated in favor of the new (1.8+) syntax. The new syntax is intended to be more intuitive and easier to remember.
• Defining an upstream branch will fail when run against newly-created remotes that have not already been fetched. In that case, run git fetch upstream beforehand.

See also: Why do I need to do `--set-upstream` all the time?

You can do the following (assuming you are checked out on master and want to push to a remote branch master):

Set up the 'remote' if you don't have it already

git remote add origin ssh://...

Now configure master to know to track:

git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

And push:

git push origin master

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 to be 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 checked out and want it to use a branch by the same name as its upstream. Make this happen with

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

For Git versions 1.8.0 and higher:

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 version 1.8.0 and higher:
git branch --set-upstream-to=upstream/qa
# Gitversions lower than 1.8.0
git branch --set-upstream qa upstream/qa

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

1- update your local meta-data using : git fetch --all

2- show your remote and local branches using : git branch -a , see the following Screenshot

3- switch to target branch , that you want to linked with the remote: using

git checkout branchName

example :

4- Link your local branch to a remote branch using:

git branch --set-upstream-to nameOfRemoteBranch

N.B : nameOfRemoteBranch : to copy from the output of step 2 " git branch -r "

Example of use:

I believe that in as early as Git 1.5.x you could make a local branch $BRANCH track a remote branch origin/$BRANCH, like this.

Given that $BRANCH and origin/$BRANCH exist, and you've not currently checked out $BRANCH (switch away if you have), do:

git branch -f --track $BRANCH origin/$BRANCH

This recreates $BRANCH as a tracking branch. The -f forces the creation despite $BRANCH existing already. --track is optional if the usual defaults are in place (that is, the git-config parameter branch.autosetupmerge is true).

Note, if origin/$BRANCH doesn't exist yet, you can create it by pushing your local $BRANCH into the remote repository with:

git push origin $BRANCH

Followed by the previous command to promote the local branch into a tracking branch.

Make sure you run :

git config push.default tracking

to be able to push trouble free

Editing .git/config is probably the easiest and fastest way. That's what the Git commands for handling remote branches are doing, anyway.

If you don't want to muck with the file by hand (and it's not that hard to do), you can always use git config to do it...but again, that's just going to edit the .git/config file, anyway.

There are, of course, ways to automatically track a remote branch when using git checkout (by passing the --track flag, for example), but these commands work with new branches, not existing ones.

In very short

git branch --set-upstream yourLocalBranchName origin/develop

This will make your yourLocalBranchName track the remote branch called develop.

For 1.6.x, it can be done using the git_remote_branch tool:

grb track foo upstream

That will cause Git to make foo track upstream/foo.

I use the following command (Suppose your local branch name is "branch-name-local" and remote branch name is "branch-name-remote"):

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/branch-name-remote branch-name-local

If both local and remote branches have the same name, then just do the following:

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

For creating new branch, we could use following command

 git checkout --track -b example origin/example 

 git branch -u origin/remote-branch-name

Use '--track' Option

• After a git pull :

  git checkout --track <remote-branch-name>

• Or:

  git fetch && git checkout <branch-name>

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

$ git clone git@github.com:user/repo.git

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

$ git remote show origin

* remote origin
  Fetch URL: git@github.com:user/repo.git
  Push  URL: git@github.com: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 git@github.com:user/repo.git
$ git checkout develop

For git version 2.25.1, use the command:

git push --set-upstream origin <local_branch_name>

In case you got "error: the requested upstream branch 'origin/foo' does not exist" after running:

git branch -u origin/foo

1. Make sure origin does have a foo branch.

2. Make sure the remote.origin.fetch variable is set to +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*:

$ git config remote.origin.fetch '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*'
$ git config --get remote.origin.fetch
+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

3. Run git fetch -v. You should see git updating from origin/foo:

$ git fetch -v
From github.com:davidhcefx/test
 * [new branch]      foo             -> origin/foo
 = [up to date]      master          -> origin/master

4. Upon success, git branch -avv will show square brackets, indicating tracked remote branches:

$ git branch -u origin/foo
branch 'foo' set up to track 'origin/foo'.
$ git branch -avv
* foo                            92c5ada [origin/foo] Initial commit
  master                         92c5ada [origin/master] Initial commit

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

In a somewhat related way I was trying to add a remote tracking branch to an existing branch, but did not have access to that remote repository on the system where I wanted to add that remote tracking branch on (because I frequently export a copy of this repo via sneakernet to another system that has the access to push to that remote). I found that there was no way to force adding a remote branch on the local that hadn't been fetched yet (so local did not know that the branch existed on the remote and I would get the error: the requested upstream branch 'origin/remotebranchname' does not exist).

In the end I managed to add the new, previously unknown remote branch (without fetching) by adding a new head file at .git/refs/remotes/origin/remotebranchname and then copying the ref (eyeballing was quickest, lame as it was ;-) from the system with access to the origin repo to the workstation (with the local repo where I was adding the remote branch on).

Once that was done, I could then use git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/remotebranchname

or simply by :

switch to the branch if you are not in it already:

[za]$ git checkout branch_name

run

[za]$ git branch --set-upstream origin branch_name
Branch origin set up to track local branch brnach_name by rebasing.

and you ready to :

 [za]$ git push origin branch_name

You can alawys take a look at the config file to see what is tracking what by running:

 [za]$ git config -e

It's also nice to know this, it shows which branches are tracked and which ones are not. :

  [za]$ git remote show origin 

For anyone who, like me, just wants to sync up your local branch name with the remote branch name, here's a handy command:

git branch -u origin/$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)

To avoid remembering what you need to do each time you get the message:

Please specify which branch you want to merge with. See git-pull(1)
for details.
.....

You can use the following script which sets origin as upstream for the current branch you are in.

In my case I almost never set something else than origin as the default upstream. Also I almost always keep the same branch name for local and remote branch. So the following fits me:

#!/bin/bash
# scriptname: git-branch-set-originupstream
current_branch="$(git branch | grep -oP '(?<=^\* )(.*)$')"
upstream="origin/$current_branch"
git branch -u "$upstream"

This would work too

git branch --set-upstream-to=/< remote>/< branch> < localbranch>