GIT pulling or cloning repository only gets Master branch

JohnA picture JohnA · Nov 3, 2012 · Viewed 28.5k times · Source

I host on BitBucket when I git clone a repository or use git pull origin master and git pull origin myBranch it does pull second time, but when I list branches with git branch -v I only see master. Doing git status shows nothing too.

How do I pull all of the branches off the web repo to my local repo?

Could it be that it's because I changed computers and name on the git settings changed so it only lets me get master since it's the default branch and the other one can be only accessed by whoever created it?

Answer

Michael Durrant picture Michael Durrant · Nov 3, 2012

Try using this:

git branch -a

You'll see the list of remote branches in origin/ e.g.

Output:

remotes/origin/tk_removes_call_centers
remotes/origin/tk_warm_transfer_fix
remotes/origin/update_README

and you can then

git checkout [any_individual_branch_name]

You can also get the same list with git branch -v --all which includes the most recent commit info, i.e.

git branch -v --all

output:

remotes/origin/tk_removes_call_centers     1478b14 re-adding call feedback workers
remotes/origin/tk_warm_transfer_fix        94720c5 handling blank auto policy
remotes/origin/update_README               a769b82 Update README

git branch -v (without --all) only shows branches you've worked on. When you use --all you see all the tracking branches in origin/

Related:
- How to clone all remote branches in Git?
- How do you create a remote Git branch?
- Git fetch remote branch
- How do I check out a remote Git branch?