What is Git Checkout Remote Branch? How it works, when to use it, examples, tutorials
and more 
Git is one of the most useful tools for developers and development teams. And the remote branch of Git checkout makes collaboration and review easy. Let’s learn about this today.
As developers, we work with Git often. In fact, at Stackify by Netreo, we have a Git page where you can see quite a few repositories. Like many developers and groups, we migrated our version control to a Git-based system a few years ago. So, working with Git is a big part of our ongoing work.
It is very important for developers to understand how to work with Git, Git repositories (how to control the size of their reports, a problem we talk about here) and code in Git. One thing you’ll do at least periodically is review a remote branch, so we’ve put together this short tutorial to cover the ins and outs of working with remote branches in Git.
Git
remote branch definition The remote branch of Git checkout is a way for a developer to access the work of a colleague or collaborator. Git is version control software that helps developers keep track of different modifications to their code. It allows multiple developers to work on the same codebase simultaneously. Sometimes a programmer will need access to the freelance work of a co-worker, or “branch.” The git checkout remote fork action makes this possible.
Developers often divide their freelance work into separate remote branches for the purpose of review and collaboration. There is no actual command called “git checkout remote branch”. It’s just a way of referring to the action of checking a remote branch office.
Why use Git Checkout Remote Branch?
In Git, a branch is a separate development line. The Git branch command creates new branches.
When a programmer fixes a bug or adds a new feature, he or she creates a new branch to make the changes. The new Git branch ensures that changes don’t threaten existing working code. This keeps your work independent, leaving less room for merge conflicts later on.
Sometimes developers need access to a branch that is not stored locally, but they don’t want to create a new branch or local version. When you really want to work on the remote version, you should use the remote branch method of checkout Git.
How does it work?
The remote branch
of Git checkout allows us to change and work on a remote branch, just like switching to a local one. For the latest versions
of Git, you can simply use: Git Fetch
This will load all remote branches locally, so you can now simply access any remote branch office through its name as a local branch using the checkout command as shown:
git checkout
branchxyz
In this case, the remote branch is called “branchxyz”.
Examples
Below are a couple of examples of checking out remote branches with
Git
.
In this one, we’re simply checking a remote
branch called xyz: git
fetch git
checkout xyz That’s fine as long as we don’t have a local branch that’s also called “
xyz
“. In that case, we would confuse Git with the command “git checkout xyz”. We need to specify that we refer
to the remote branch like this: git
fetch
origin git checkout -track origin/xyz
If we have multiple remotes, we need to use
: Git checkout -b xyz
<remote name>/xyz
You can also create a new branch with the following command:
git checkout
-b <branch_name>
This will create a new branch for you locally outside the current branch from which you ran this command. Once you send this to remote, other developers can pay this remote branch in the same way.
Benefits
Git is an incredibly powerful tool for programmers to collaborate on coding projects. Imagine having 10 programmers working on the same piece of code and then merging those changes without any version tracking system.
With the remote branch of git checkout, multiple developers can work on a single piece of software, each making their own changes in a protected manner, without adding shaky code to working software.
The remote branch of Git checkout makes it easy to review and collaborate with other users in a fail-safe way.
Git Checkout remote fork best practices
Because the Git checkout remote branch methods listed above are a subset of Git, the best practices are the same. Here are surefire ways to succeed in working with the remote checkout branch of Git:
- Commit often. When we commit often, we keep our commitments small and share our work more often. That makes it easier to avoid major merger conflicts.
- Don’t commit to unfinished work. Break your feature code into small but functional chunks. Once you finish a piece, taste it and then compress it. This method of working avoids the potential conflicts created by combining large bodies of code at once. At the same time, it ensures that we don’t commit small pieces of code that don’t work.
- Before you commit, give it a try. Don’t confirm something until you’ve tried it. Shared code that is not tested can create a lot of headaches and wasted time for an entire team.
- Commit related changes. Keep your confirmations small and confine them to directly related changes. When we fix two separate errors, they must take the form of two different confirmations.
- Write clear confirmation messages. Include a one-sentence summary of the changes. After that, explain the motivation for the change and how it differs from the previous version.
- Use branches. The branches are an excellent tool to avoid confusion and keep the different lines of development separate.
- Agree on your workflow. Your team should agree on a workflow before the project begins. Whether that’s based on thematic branches, git-flow, long-running branches, or some other workflow will depend on the project.
Writing better code with Prefix
Making sure all the changes you make work is essential to producing top-notch software. You need tools that help you write better, cleaner code.
Try Stackify by Netreo’s free code profiler Prefix to write better code on your workstation. Prefix works with .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby and Python.