Answer by chilin for How do I check out a remote Git branch?

TL;DRusing git switch rather than git checkout, more detail in this link

I think the answer is obsolete. Git split some function of checkout to switch and restore now.

The following is my summary:

If you want to update something for remote branch, you should create local branch to "track" remote branch. You can update anything you want in local and finally push to remote. If you checkout to remote branch directly aftercloning your repository, you may see "detached HEAD" status and following message from Git:

Note: switching to 'origin/asd'.You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimentalchanges and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in thisstate without impacting any branches by switching back to a branch.If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you maydo so (now or later) by using -c with the switch command. Example:  git switch -c <new-branch-name>Or undo this operation with:  git switch -Turn off this advice by setting config variable advice.detachedHead to falseHEAD is now at d3e1083 Update a

So how to create local branch to track remote branch?

To create local branch to track remote branch, you can use git checkout <remote branch name> or git switch <remote branch name>. If you have a file or folder has same name as your remote branch name, git checkout would output some error message, but git switch can work normarly!

example:

1. see all branch, and we want to create local branch to track remote branch remotes/origin/asd, and we also have the file name asd

$ git branch -a* master  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master  remotes/origin/asd  remotes/origin/ereres  remotes/origin/master  remotes/origin/zxc$ ls                                a  asd

2. The filename is same as remote branch, Git should output some error messages if we using git checkout command to create local branch to track remote branch

$ git checkout asd  fatal: 'asd' could be both a local file and a tracking branch.Please use -- (and optionally --no-guess) to disambiguate

3. It work if we using git switch!

$ git switch ereres  Branch 'ereres' set up to track remote branch 'ereres' from 'origin'.Switched to a new branch 'ereres'$ git branch -vv* ereres 3895036 [origin/ereres] Update a  master f9e24a9 [origin/master] Merge branch 'master' of