fetch in git doesn't get all branches

Question

I have cloned a repository, after which somebody else has created a new branch, which I'd like to start working on. I read the manual, and it seems dead straight easy. Strangely it's not working, and all the posts I've found suggest I'm doing the right thing. So I'll subject myself to the lambasting, because there must be something obviously wrong with this:

The correct action seems to be

git fetch
git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD --> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master
git checkout -b dev-gml origin/dev-gml

At this point there is a problem, for some reason after git fetch I can't see the dev-gml remote branch. Why not? If I clone the repository freshly, it's there, so certainly the remote branch exists:

$ mkdir ../gitest
$ cd ../gitest
$ git clone https://github.com/example/proj.git
Cloning into proj...
remote: Counting objects: 1155, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (383/383), done.
remote: Total 1155 (delta 741), reused 1155 (delta 741)
Receiving objects: 100% (1155/1155), 477.22 KiB | 877 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (741/741), done.
$ cd projdir
$ git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/dev-gml
  remotes/origin/master

I've tried git update, git pull, git fetch --all, git pretty-please in all possible permutations...

Envelopment

What does git config --get remote.origin.fetch produce? If it's not +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*, it probably should be. – Girish

yup that's exactly what it produces – Envelopment

Exactly the same problem, but the comment above solved it! I had +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master with master instead of * – Task

Same problem for me, but none of the suggestions on this page solves it. Weird. – Scandalize

I also faced the same problem and seeing Mirkos comment I modified the .git/config section for [remote "origin"], which fixed the problem. Could this have been caused by a shallow clone? – Maximo

@thoni56: Yes, this is likely due to a shallow clone. – Stomy

I had the same problem and I could not see my colleagues's new created branch when I ran the command git fetch; then I decided to just run the command git checkout my-colleague-new-created-branch to see if it is really exists or not; then I successfully switched to the branch. In fact, is was there, but it was not shown by git branch. – Buddybuderus

Could nested submodules result in similar behavior to the shallow clone that's been mentioned? – Position

I want to add I ran into this issue when I accidently pointed at my fork instead of the actual repo when I created a branch in GitHub – Fanatical

Answer 1

The problem can be seen when checking the remote.origin.fetch setting
(The lines starting with $ are bash prompts with the commands I typed. The other lines are the resulting output)

$ git config --get remote.origin.fetch
+refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master

As you can see, in my case, the remote was set to fetch the master branch specifically and only. I fixed it as per below, including the second command to check the results.

$ git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*"
$ git config --get remote.origin.fetch
+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

The wildcard * of course means everything under that path.

Unfortunately I saw this comment after I had already dug through and found the answer by trial and error.

Prohibition

This should probably be the accepted answer, as it actually resolved the issue in the original post. – Dovetailed

just a side note, I had to add the --replace-all parameter to replace all values on the configuration for my remote.origin.fetch – Apperceive

Note that this can happen if you have cloned your repository with a single branch only, e.g. git clone <url> --branch <branch> --single-branch [<folder>] – Maximinamaximize

Check stux's answer – Dav

This fixed my issue. I have a quick question in case someone would know: Was this (having a master only setting) something from an old version of Git or could that be something that someone setup there deliberately to prevent fetching side-branches? (this master-only fetch setting is on an old machine using an old version of Git) – Upbraiding

This could happen when you clone with git clone ... --depth 1 – Onomasiology

A shallow clone with git clone --depth <depth> <repo> implies --single-branch, as noted in the man page git-clone(1), so we'd better do it with git clone --depth <depth> --no-single-branch <repo>. – Hasen

this is how my config looks, but when i do git fetch all it still doesn't pull the remote branch – Drolet

git clone --depth <depth> --no-single-branch <repo> worked way better for me than fetching all. I was purposely not fetching the entire history and this solution makes it so you'll get the entire history on the next fetch. – Loveinamist

@Loveinamist I'm pretty sure --no-single-branch didn't exist when this was answered in 2014.. Anyway, losing all the history and creating an incomplete clone would not have solved my issue back then. It really depends what you're doing. – Prohibition

i also had this problem after a shallow clone - as doing git fetch --unshallow yes fetches the history, but doestn fetch all the branches :( – Lawyer

This is the actual solution to the problem : check your remote config and don't shallow clone – Girth

I confirm that this is a fix after you do >git clone --depth 1 >git fetch --unshallow Something I did to fix this issue: stackoverflow.com/questions/38618885/… – Posthumous

Note: Most hosting providers give you the GUI and from that GUI they mostly fetch the master branch so sometimes in that case we need to update remote origin. – Infarct

Happened for me because of --depth 1 took a while to understand why remote branches are not shown. – Alack

Your solution solved my problem in addition with another answer from @stux which suggests to do git remote rm origin then git remote add origin <git uri>. This could be maybe added as an edit in your answer to save time for people encountering this problem. – Decadence

Answer 2

I had this issue today on a repo.

It wasn't the +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* issue as per top solution.

Symptom was simply that git fetch origin or git fetch just didn't appear to do anything, although there were remote branches to fetch.

After trying lots of things, I removed the origin remote, and recreated it. That seems to have fixed it. Don't know why.

remove with: git remote rm origin

and recreate with: git remote add origin <git uri>

Garrott

I had correct git config for remote.origin.fetch i.e. +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*. The above solution helped me. – Dav

This solution was the correct one for me also. This is unfortunate since it indicates there's potentially a bug in Git. – Unreliable

This also solved my issue. I also appear to have this issue on a machine with git version 2.19.1v but didnt experience it on another machine with git version 2.17.1 – Teleost

git remote update origin worked for me. I guess something needed refreshing? – Tarnopol

git remote update origin didn't work for me but removing and adding the remote did. – Ovovitellin

I had the same issue. I think it happens when I git checkout -b myremotebranch before I git fetch the remote branch. It create a new local branch and even after git branch -d myremotebranch I cannot fetch it. – Cleaning

This solved my case too; I just had this issue with git 2.17.1. – Percale

Happened with me (Apple Git-122) git version 2.21.0. Only thing that worked was to remove and then re-add the origin with git remote add origin. – Postnasal

Weird--so it happened again, but as it turns out, though git branch doesn't list all the fetched branches, I can still check them out. Seems like some kind of bug. – Postnasal

This happened to me today with multiple repos, on version 2.25.1. Noting that we'd recently changed a number of our repos to use 'main' as the primary branch and then deleted 'master'. On most machines we had no problem with get fetch --all but on my (up-to-date) WSL ubunto instance, consistent with multiple repos. – Victualer

Same issue happened to me on git version 2.32.1 (Apple Git-133) with an ssh remote. Removing and adding origin helped. – Biancabiancha

This appeared to work for me (git fetch finally printed all the [new branch]es), but then git branch still showed that none of those branches were local. I also had to do git branch <branch_name> FETCH_HEAD to get <branch_name> to appear in git branch list locally, and be accessible locally. – Jackofalltrades

“Try turning it off and on again” – Gallenz

The solution by @Jackofalltrades resolved the final issue for me and now I can see the branch locally – Isagogics

Same for me, this should be added the accepted answered. I encountered the problem with the Git version: 2.41.0.windows.3. – Decadence

same here: removing and re-adding the origin as described in the solution works for me. I'm also on git v 2.17.1 – Sextodecimo

Answer 3

Remote update

You need to run

git remote update

or

git remote update <remote> 

Then you can run git branch -r to list the remote branches.

Checkout a new branch

To track a (new) remote branch as a local branch:

git checkout -b <local branch> <remote>/<remote branch>

or (sometimes it doesn't work without the extra remotes/):

git checkout -b <local branch> remotes/<remote>/<remote branch>

Helpful git cheatsheets

• Some notes on git
• Git Cheat Sheet (pdf)

Trimble

But my problem is that I can't checkout an existing remote branch, because my git client doesn't think it exists. See my question. Note that when I run git fetch followed by git branch -a it does not show all the branches. I had to delete my working directory and re-clone to see the branch dev-gml that a collaborator made. It worked this time, but we will be branching often! – Envelopment

Hey @EdwardNewell, thnks for the answer, just to let you know, your link cheat.errtheblog.com/s/git is dead for me... – Cara

It's been a long time since I first asked this question, and I just got pinged because someone posted afresh. I'm accepting this answer, even though originally nothing actually worked for me. The reason I have finally marked this correct is because I suspect that what (s)he wrote beside Edit: very well might have worked. It is what I would try if I was still facing the problem. HTH – Envelopment

For the record, the bit that helped me here is git remote update origin. That made the missing branch visible via git branch -l -r. (I did look at git config --get remote.origin.fetch and the output was +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* as expected.) – Triple

This answer also worked for me after I saw my git config for remote.origin.fetch was correct. – Generative

This worked for me when get fetch did nothing .. then I realized I was using an ancient version of git (1.8.x.x), so I'm going to assume the functionality of fetch and remote update has evolved some in more recent versions. Before this, I had to blow away the repo and re-clone it every time. – Bluegreen

@EdwardNewell Same as you, fetch and checkout tell me not found, re-clone works. Don't know why. :( git version 2.43.2 – Umbilical

Answer 4

Had the same problem today setting up my repo from scratch. I tried everything, nothing worked except removing the origin and re-adding it back again.

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin [email protected]:web3coach/the-blockchain-bar-newsletter-edition.git

git fetch --all
// Ta daaa all branches fetched

Stiletto

This work for me, thanks. – Dampier

Answer 5

write it from the terminal

git fetch --prune.

it works fine.

Inoffensive

Thank you! I tried many things and thought I'd just give this a shot... Now to look up what I actually did... – Lubow

What does it do? – Soerabaja

It takes all available branches. Look at the head. – Philology

Answer 6

I had a similar problem, however in my case I could pull/push to the remote branch but git status didn't show the local branch state w.r.t the remote ones.

Also, in my case git config --get remote.origin.fetch didn't return anything

The problem is that there was a typo in the .git/config file in the fetch line of the respective remote block. Probably something I added by mistake previously (sometimes I directly look at this file, or even edit it)

So, check if your remote entry in the .git/config file is correct, e.g.:

[remote "origin"]
    url = https://[server]/[user or organization]/[repo].git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Balk

I had quite the same case today and think I found a clue. I cloned my repo, as it contains a ´master´ and a ´devel´ branch. When I run git config --get remote.origin.fetch it returns +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master. But at the same time if i look into the config file it shows two refspecs fetch = +refs/heads/devel:refs/remotes/origin/devel as well as fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master. It seems git config --get remote.origin.fetch only returns the last entry. So, if on doubt look at the file and add the refspec manually. – Wilonah

At least that is what i get in my enviroment. I'm tied on a windows system, so i use the powershell with the posh-git module installed – Wilonah

Answer 7

git checkout --track origin/formats seemed to do the trick:

% git branch      ### show local branches
* main

% git branch - a  ### show local and remote branches
* main
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/main
  remote/origin/formats
  remote/origin/main

% git checkout --track origin/formats
Switched to a new branch 'formats'
Branch 'formats' set up to track remote branch 'formats' from 'origin'

% git branch
* formats
  main

The following should do the same but with different local branch name:

git checkout -b my-formats origin/formats 

A new syntax git switch is available in git c2.23

git switch -c <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

Felon

Answer 8

I had cloned the repo with --depth 1, so these answers weren't working. What did work for me was

git fetch origin BRANCHNAME:BRANCHNAME

It succesfully created a local branch with the same name.

Kweiyang

Answer 9

To make it more specific Create a tracking branch, which means you are now tracking a remote branch.

git branch --track branch remote-branch
git branch --track exp remotes/origin/experimental

After which you can

git branch   # to see the remote tracking branch "exp" created .

Then to work on that branch do

git checkout branchname
git checkout exp

After you have made changes to the branch. You can git fetch and git merge with your remote tracking branch to merge your changes and push to the remote branch as below.

git fetch origin
git merge origin/experimental  
git push origin/experimental

Hope it helps and gives you an idea, how this works.

Spurrier

Answer 10

This could be due to a face palm moment: if you switch between several clones it is easy to find yourself in the wrong source tree trying to pull a non-existent branch. It is easier when the clones have similar names, or the repos are distinct clones for the same project from each of multiple contributors. A new git clone would obviously seem to solve that "problem" when the real problem is losing focus or working context or both.

Samirasamisen

Thankyou for posting this answer. This was 100% my issue – Brazell

Answer 11

I had to go into my GitExtensions Remote Repositories as nothing here seemed to be working. There I saw that 2 branches had no remote repository configured. after adjusting it looks as follows

Notice branch noExternal3 still shows as not having a remote repository. Not sure what combo of bash commands would have found or adjusted that.

Cherry

Answer 12

My issue: fetch and checkout tell me not found, re-clone works.

git config --get remote.origin.fetch output:

+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Seems no problem.

Because the commit I try to checkout is on a tag but not a branch, I try to git fetch --tags, then checkout the commit, it works finally!

See https://mcmap.net/q/12282/-does-quot-git-fetch-tags-quot-include-quot-git-fetch-quot to configure git to fetch all branches and tags.

Umbilical

Answer 13

All you need to do is, apply the following 2 commands:

git fetch --all

And once you see the branch (which was not visible before e.g. osc_at_works), select that and checkout as below:

git checkout origin/team/Enterprise/osc_at_works

Harlem

Didn't work for me! – Flinger