How to Fetch All Git Branches

To list remote branches:

git branch -r

You can check them out as local branches with:

git checkout -b LocalName origin/remotebranchname

You will need to create local branches tracking remote branches.

Assuming that you've got only one remote called origin, this snippet will create local branches for all remote tracking ones:

for b in `git branch -r | grep -v -- '->'`; do git branch --track ${b##origin/} $b; done

After that, git fetch --all will update all local copies of remote branches.

Also, git pull --all will update your local tracking branches, but depending on your local commits and how the 'merge' configure option is set it might create a merge commit, fast-forward or fail.

If you do:

git fetch origin

then they will be all there locally. If you then perform:

git branch -a

you'll see them listed as remotes/origin/branch-name. Since they are there locally you can do whatever you please with them. For example:

git diff origin/branch-name 

or

git merge origin/branch-name

or

git checkout -b some-branch origin/branch-name

$ git remote update
$ git pull --all

This assumes all branches are tracked.

If they aren't you can fire this in Bash:

for remote in `git branch -r `; do git branch --track $remote; done

Then run the command.

The Bash for loop wasn't working for me, but this did exactly what I wanted. All the branches from my origin mirrored as the same name locally.

git checkout --detach
git fetch origin '+refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*'

See Mike DuPont's comment below. I think I was trying to do this on a Jenkins Server which leaves it in detached head mode.

Use git fetch && git checkout RemoteBranchName.

It works very well for me...

When you clone a repository all the information of the branches is actually downloaded but the branches are hidden. With the command

$ git branch -a

you can show all the branches of the repository, and with the command

$ git checkout -b branchname origin/branchname

you can then "download" them manually one at a time.

However, there is a much cleaner and quicker way, though it's a bit complicated. You need three steps to accomplish this:

1. First step

   create a new empty folder on your machine and clone a mirror copy of the .git folder from the repository:

   $ cd ~/Desktop && mkdir my_repo_folder && cd my_repo_folder
   $ git clone --mirror  .git
   

   the local repository inside the folder my_repo_folder is still empty, there is just a hidden .git folder now that you can see with a "ls -alt" command from the terminal.

2. Second step

   switch this repository from an empty (bare) repository to a regular repository by switching the boolean value "bare" of the git configurations to false:

   $ git config --bool core.bare false
   

3. Third Step

   Grab everything that inside the current folder and create all the branches on the local machine, therefore making this a normal repo.

   $ git reset --hard
   

So now you can just type the command git branch and you can see that all the branches are downloaded.

This is the quick way in which you can clone a git repository with all the branches at once, but it's not something you wanna do for every single project in this way.

You can fetch all the branches by:

git fetch --all

or:

git fetch origin --depth=10000 $(git ls-remote -h -t origin)

^{The --depth=10000 parameter may help if you've shallowed repository.}

To pull all the branches, use:

git pull --all

If above won't work, then precede the above command with:

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

as the remote.origin.fetch could support only a specific branch while fetching, especially when you cloned your repo with --single-branch. Check this by: git config remote.origin.fetch.

After that you should be able to checkout any branch.

See also:

• How to fetch all remote branches?
• How to clone all remote branches in Git?

To push all the branches to the remote, use:

git push --all

eventually --mirror to mirror all refs.

If your goal is to duplicate a repository, see: Duplicating a repository article at GitHub.

I usually use nothing else but commands like this:

git fetch origin
git checkout --track origin/remote-branch

A little shorter version:

git fetch origin
git checkout -t origin/remote-branch

You don't see the remote branches because you are not tracking them.

1. Make sure you are tracking all of the remote branches (or whichever ones you want to track).
2. Update your local branches to reflect the remote branches.