Git: How to fetch a single remote branch and create a remote-tracking branch of it automatically?

Question

git fetch remote_repo

will update "remote-tracking branches" of all branches from the remote repository.

What if I only need fetch a single remote branch?

I try to run:

git fetch remote_repo remote_branch

It just stores infomation into FETCH_HEAD instead of creating a "remote-tracking branch" named remote_repo/remote_branch.

I know there is a solution:

git fetch remote_repo remote_branch:refs/remotes/remote_repo/remote_branch

But it's too verbose.

Is there a simpler way to achieve this?

Marco Leogrande · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-22 08:00:33Z

If the set of remote branches that you want to fetch is somewhat stable, you can edit remote.<name>.fetch with git-config to achieve that result:

git config remote.remote_repo.fetch remote_branch:refs/remotes/remote_repo/remote_branch

That config will be picked up as default when running a bare git fetch:

remote.<name>.fetch The default set of "refspec" for git-fetch(1). See git-fetch(1).

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