fetch remote branch with the same name
I want to fetch a branch from a remote, but my branch name does not start with remote name, for example:
git checkout -b BRANCH origin/BRANCH
It work in some cases, but in some cases I get this error:
fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches.
while i am sure that the remote has this branch, and this works:
git checkout -b origin/BRANCH
After that, I have to switch to another branch and rename branch origin/BRANCH to BRANCH, and then switch to BRANCH again... I want to know what that error means.
Answer
This is why you are getting the error message that you are.
git checkout can do one of two things. If you just specify a branch and don't specify any paths then it will switch your current branch to the branch that you specified.
git checkout mybranch # switch to branch 'my branch'
If you supply some paths, then git will checkout those paths either from the index or, if you specify a branch, from a given branch.
git checkout myfile # checkout 'myfile' from index
As you can see, there is a potential ambiguity. What should happen if you had a branch called myfile or a file called mybranch?
The way that git resolves this ambiguity is that it tests the parameter to see whether it matches a branch first, and if not it assumes that the parameter refers to a file. If you had a branch and file with the same name you can force git to treat the parameter as a file with this syntax.
git checkout -- myfile # treat 'myfile' as a file
The -b option, which creates a new branch, is only valid when you are using the branch switching form of checkout and not when you are checking out specified files from the index.
git checkout -b newbranch myfile # Illegal. I can't use `-b` when
# I'm checking out files.
If you try git checkout -b newbranch origin/BRANCH and you get this error it means that origin/BRANCH didn't match the name of any branch that you have so git assumed that you must be referring to a file.
To show what remote branch references you have you can do git branch -r. If you don't have a reference to a branch that you think should exist you may have to perform a git fetch to retrieve it from the remote.
If you supply -b but no branch name to base the new branch off, git defaults to using HEAD, i.e. the commit that your current checked out branch is on.
git checkout -b origin/BRANCH
This creates a new local branch called origin/BRANCH based on your current commit. This is, at best, likely to cause you some confusion and doesn't sound like it's what you want at all.