Git newbie: about branch in my case

Question

If other developers in the team have two branches: master and develop, then, I join the team, and initially after I cloned the project, I have only a master branch, meanwhile, the other team members are continuing developing & pushing code to the develop branch, and they have not yet merge the code from develop to master.

I would like to join the development on develop branch, is it so that I should create develop branch on my machine first, then switch from master to develop branch by git branch develop, then pull origin develop, after that I will get the up-to-date code on develop branch as other developers'? or Is there anything wrong in my process?

another question is, is Git branch name case sensitive or not?

-------------------More info in my case---------

I do not have develop branch yet. I have only master branch currently. I cloned the project long time ago, at that time there is only master branch, then I join the team now. I would like now to get the up-to-date develop and master branches as other developers'

Answer 1

Or rather,

git checkout -b develop origin/develop

(Assume your git remote is called origin). So the local branch develop will now track the remote branch origin/develop.

And to list all remote branches,

git branch -r

Answer 2

1. You could do just git checkout develop. If the develop branch has been fetched from remote repository, the git will create a local branch from the remote one and will set tracking of it.

2. Branch names are files on a file system. So, on windows it's case insensitive, on linux it's sensitive.

Answer 3

The easiest way to get the develop branch from your Git remote, which I assume is called origin, is:

$ git fetch origin
$ git checkout develop

If your version of Git is recent enough, it will tell you that you now have a "remote tracking branch" develop.

And yes, branch names are case-sensitive.