git remote add -f doesn't add tracking branches

Question

I'm cloning a fork of a project in github and want to set up an upstream remote to track the original project. As I understand things, fetching the upstream remote should create tracking branches of the remotes branches in my local repo, but git isn't doing that, so either I misunderstand the process or I'm doing something wrong.

I've tried both

git remote add upstream https://github.com/dude1/awesome-project.git
git fetch upstream

and

git remote add -f upstream https://github.com/dude1/awesome-project.git

and when I do git branch -a after either set of operations all I have is my origin tracking branches.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Adding remote repository does not track all the branches on remote repo. To track remote branches, you should do

• If you don't have branch on your local repo and want to create one.

  git branch {branch_name} upstream/{branch_name}
  

where {branch_name} represents your branch name.

It will create a branch in your local repo and will track remote branch which you have specified.

• If you have branch on your local repo and want to push it to remote repo,

  git push upstream {branch_name_on_local}:{branch_name_in_repo}