Remotes

Checkout a remote branch

When working with other developers, it proves useful from time to time to checkout a copy of a remote collaborator's branch, say to view changes or test a new feature implemented on that branch. Say your collaborator Alice works on a common file system, has login name alice and her EGSnrc repository is ~alice/EGSnrc. To checkout a local copy of her newfeature branch in your EGSnrc repository, follow these steps:

cd /path/to/your/EGSnrc/repository
git remote add alice ~alice/EGSnrc
git fetch alice
    * [new branch]      master     -> alice/master
    * [new branch]      develop    -> alice/develop
    * [new branch]      newfeature -> alice/newfeature
git chechout -b newfeature alice/newfeature
    Branch newfeature set up to track remote branch newfeature from alice.
    Switched to a new branch 'newfeature'

Note that any URL can be used instead of ~alice/EGSnrc in this example (for example https://github.com/egsalice/EGSnrc if she maintains a clone of EGSnrc under an egsalice github account). At this point you will be on a local branch newfeature which tracks alice's remote newfeature branch. When you are done you can remove this branch and the remote with:

git checkout master
git branch -D newfeature
git remote rm alice

For more information on remotes, see https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Working-with-Remotes.