Does `git branch remotes/origin/foo` create a new branch?

Question

I was under master branch, and run git branch -ra which shows a branch

remotes/origin/deals

The branch isn't shown in the output of git branch. I guess that it is a remote-tracking branch, correct?

I wanted to switch to that branch, but I accidentally ran

$ git branch remotes/origin/deals
$ git branch
* master
  remotes/origin/deals

Is it correct that i should have ran git branch -b remotes/origin/deals instead?

Did I create a new branch whose name is also remotes/origin/deals, and are there now two branches whose names are both remotes/origin/deals and how is that possible?

If I created a new branch remotes/origin/deals, is it a local branch? how can I remove it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The answers you have gotten so far are all correct, but are not pointing out a key distinction. As you saw in another question, Git declares that there are two "kinds" of branches, regular (local) branches and remote-tracking branches.

Under the hood, however, Git actually unifies these—and tags, too—by lumping them all together under the general category of references. So this brings up a good question: How does Git decide that B is a local branch and R is a remote-tracking branch?

The obvious answer is actually the wrong answer!

The git branch command, when run with no flags or with -l, shows local branches:

$ git branch
master
test

Or, when run with -r, it shows remote-tracking branches:

$ git branch -r
origin/master
origin/test

You might say to yourself: Aha, origin means "remote-tracking". But this isn't true, and in fact, when you run git branch -a to see both local and remote-tracking branches, the output changes:

$ git branch -a
master
test
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/test

Now it's a bit more mysterious. Maybe remotes/origin means remote-tracking? Well, that's closer, but still not right.

How Git distinguishes local and remote-tracking branches

In fact, git branch is lying to you, with a good excuse: it's trying to shorten things. The full name of each reference starts with refs/. If git branch did not do this shortening, you would see:

refs/heads/master
refs/heads/test
refs/remotes/origin/master
refs/remotes/origin/test

Now the obvious answer is the correct answer: A local branch starts with refs/heads/ and a remote-tracking branch starts with refs/remotes/. (For completeness, let's also note that a tag starts with refs/tags/.) The git branch command shortens these, with the idea that you know what kind of branch you're looking for because you either asked for local branches or for remote-tracking branches.

The same goes for branch creation

The git branch command applies the same rules to branch creation. If you use -l or no flag at all, it creates a regular (local) branch: it puts refs/heads/ in front of whatever you typed in. If you use -r, it creates a remote-tracking branch: it puts refs/remotes/ in front. Then, as usual, it strips those off again when it shows them to you.

What this means is that git branch remotes/origin/deals creates refs/heads/remotes/origin/deals: a local branch, not a remote-tracking branch. It then shows up as remotes/origin/deals after stripping off refs/heads/. It's sometimes impossible to tell this apart from an actual remote-tracking branch refs/remotes/origin/deals, so if you actually had both the name would be somewhat ambiguous.¹ Since you don't, though, it's not ambiguous: it's just a local branch, with a very misleading name.

Diagnostic tools

The "plumbing" command git for-each-ref will, as its default action, print every reference—branches, remote-tracking branches, tags, "notes", the "stash": in short, everything under refs/—by full name. If you're in this ambiguous-reference situation, you can get a full dump of everything using git for-each-ref.

For a nicer (higher level) view, git branch with appropriate flags, and/or with various color options set, will split up the names. If git branch -l (or git branch with no flags) shows a branch name, it's local, even if it starts with origin/ or remotes/origin/. If git branch -r shows a branch name, it's a remote-tracking branch. With color mode turned on, local branches default to plain, except for the current branch which is printed in green; and remote-tracking branches are printed in red. Adding multiple v flags (e.g., git branch -avv), you get additional information, with "upstream" names printed in blue. (Upstreams are most often remote-tracking branches, since these are the ones Git creates automatically, but you can set one local branch as the upstream for another local branch.)

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¹Git deals with this by choosing one according to Git's internal rules. These rules are described in the gitrevisions documentation, but there is an important caveat: the git checkout command uses its own, different, rules. So git diff or git log will show one thing, while git checkout will do another, in some ambiguous-name cases. It's best just to avoid the situation entirely.

Answer 2

When you ran

$ git branch remotes/origin/deals

...you created a new file:

# file describing local branch created by the above command
.git/logs/refs/heads/remotes/origin/deals

...which, indeed, you should probably delete (either by hand, or with git branch -d remotes/origin/deals).

This is as opposed to the file pointing to the remote branch head:

# file created by fetching from the remote branch
.git/logs/refs/remotes/origin/deals

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To check out a remote branch, you should use:

$ git checkout remotes/origin/deals

...or, to create and checkout a local branch which tracks that remote branch:

$ git checkout -b deals --track origin/deals

Answer 3

If you want switch on a remote branch you need : git checkout branchname .

Now you has created a branch with same name of remote branch . A simple solution could be to clone your project on a different local folder . After this you can run : git checkout remotes/origin/deals .

Answer 4

git branch remotes/origin/deals creates a new branch called remotes/origin/deals

git checkout -b remotes/origin/deals creates a new branch called remotes/origin/deals and points to that branch

git checkout remotes/origin/deals points to an existing branch called remotes/origin/deals

git branch -d remotes/origin/deals safely deletes the branch making sure there is no uncommitted work

git branch -D remotes/origin/deals forcefully deletes the branch

git push origin --delete {the_remote_branch} deletes the remote branch