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If we want to create branches from both remote branches, it's better to use distinguishing names for the new branches: git switch -c gitlab_foo origin/foo We need to specify it with git switch -c foo origin/foo or git switch -c foo github/foo according to the need. git switch foo will complain fatal: invalid reference: foo, because it does not known from which ref, origin/foo or github/foo, to create foo. In this case the repository has origin/foo and github/foo. If we maintain a repository in Gitlab and Github at the same time, the local repository may have two remotes, for example, origin for Gitlab and github for Github. More generally, if foo does not exist, try to create foo from a known ref or commit and then switch to foo: git switch -c foo If foo does not exist and origin/foo exists, try to create foo from origin/foo and then switch to foo: git switch -c foo origin/foo If foo exists, try to switch to foo: git switch foo If you make new commits, the new commits are not reachable from any existing branches and none of the branches will be updated.Īs 2.23.0 has been released, with it we can also use git switch to create and switch branches. It leads to be in detached HEAD state, not on any branch. Git checkout origin/another_branch succeeds if origin/another_branch exists. origin is mostly used in git fetch, git pull and git push as a remote, an alias of the url to the remote repository. If origin is a revision and another_branch is a file, then it checks out the file of that revision but most probably that's not what you expect. Git checkout origin another_branch returns error in most cases. If neither exists, git checkout another_branch returns error. That's to create another_branch from origin/another_branch and set origin/another_branch as the upstream of another_branch.
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If another_branch does not exist but origin/another_branch does, then git checkout another_branch is equivalent to git checkout -b another_branch origin/another_branch git branch -u origin/another_branch. If another_branch already exists locally and you are not on this branch, then git checkout another_branch switches to the branch.
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