Git Guide: How to Clone all remote branches in Git

To clone a remote git repository, enter the following into the terminal:

Note: Make sure you are in a root folder e.g. webdev instead of a project specific folder.

git clone <remote_repo>
cd <remote_repo>

List your branches using these commands:

git branch // Lists local branches
git branch -a // Lists local and remote branches

To checkout a remote branch locally:

If a remote branch exists with the name of the branch you checked out, it will automatically track the remote branch.

git checkout <branch>

Here is an example of fetching the remote master branch from FreeCodeCamp:

git clone https://github.com/FreeCodeCamp/FreeCodeCamp.git
cd FreeCodeCamp
git checkout master

Git Remote

The git remote command allows you to manage your Git remote repositories. Remote repositories are references to other Git repositories that operate on the same codebase.

You can pull from and push to remote repositories.

You can push or pull to either an HTTPS URL, such as https://github.com/user/repo.git , or an SSH URL, like git@github.com:user/repo.git .

Don’t worry, every time you push something, you don’t need to type the entire URL. Git associates a remote URL with a name, and the name most people use is origin .

List all configured remote repositories

git remote -v

This command lists all remote repositories alongside their location.

Remote repositories are referred to by name. As noted above, the main repository for a project is usually called origin .

When you you use git clone to obtain a copy of a repository, Git sets up the original location as the origin remote repository.

Add a remote repository

To add a remote repository to your project, you would run the following command:

git remote add REMOTE-NAME REMOTE-URL

The REMOTE-URL can be either HTTPS or SSH. You can find the URL on GitHub by clicking the “Clone or download” dropdown in your repository.

For example, if you want to add a remote repository and call it example , you would run:

git remote add example https://example.org/my-repo.git

Update a remote URL

If the URL of a remote repository changes, you can update it with the following command, where example is the name of the remote:

git remote set-url example https://example.org/my-new-repo.git

Deleting Remotes

Deleting remotes is done like so:

git remote rm REMOTE-NAME

You can confirm the remote is gone by viewing the list of your existing remotes:

git remote -v
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