How do I pull a remote branch in git without conflicts?

Question

There is a branch on remote I would like to work on. It is old and I no longer have an old copy of it on my local machine. It is really far behind master. Whenever I attempt to pull it I get conflicts. I just want to create an exact duplicate of the remote branch on my local system. Why would that lead to conflicts?

I tried:

git pull origin branch_name:branch_name

That created a new branch on my local machine with the right name, but it led to conflicts.

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '09 at 21:31

10

git fetch origin
git checkout -b newoldbranch oldoldbranch

answered Dec 18 '09 at 21:31

Michael Krelin - hacker

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I had to specify remote: `git checkout -b branch origin/branch` – Francisco Quintero Jan 04 '16 at 14:51
@Francisco, yes, oldoldbranch means full branch specification as it's stored in local repository. – Michael Krelin - hacker Jan 04 '16 at 18:18
Thanks for clarifying. I didn't assume it that way. – Francisco Quintero Jan 04 '16 at 19:23
Sorry about that, @Francisco. – Michael Krelin - hacker Jan 04 '16 at 22:59

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 19 '09 at 22:38

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git pull repo branch is basically shorthand for git fetch repo branch and git merge repo/branch. I'm not one to often say RTFM, especially with git, but it is the first line of the git-pull docs. "git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch". The implicit merge is causing the conflict. You just want a fetch & checkout as Michael said.

answered Dec 19 '09 at 22:38

Schwern

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Yeah, it'll do that. Trust me, its worth the effort. So much simpler than SVN once you get it. – Schwern Dec 21 '09 at 07:37

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 18 '09 at 21:32

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Can't you simply check it out ?

git checkout branch_name

?

answered Dec 18 '09 at 21:32

Brian Agnew

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This sort of worked, but I had to change it: git branch branch_name origin/branch_name git checkout branch_name – Bjorn Dec 18 '09 at 21:44
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It's not that I mind, but isn't it funny that you accepted this answer, although you had to change it to mine? ;-) git branch + git checkout is equivalent to git checkout -b ;-) – Michael Krelin - hacker Dec 19 '09 at 21:46

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 16 '22 at 13:49

I like to change to another local branch, remove an existing one where I want to pull (for example task_branch), and change again:

git checkout - // changing to previous branch, or just git checkout master
git branch -D task_branch // remove local branch
git fetch // fetch data from remote
git checkout task_branch // change to the branch with the newest changes

and optionally check if everything is up to date by git pull

How do I pull a remote branch in git without conflicts?

4 Answers4