Remote Branches¶

When working with remote repositories, you get so-called remote-tracking branches. Remote-tracking branches are references to the state of remote branches. The names of these branches take the form of <remote>/<branch>, e.g. origin/development.

You cannot directly manipulate these branches yourself. Git will automatically do this whenever any network communication occurs, in order to make sure they accurately represent the state of the remote repository.

Visual example of remote-tracking branches in a repository:

Manipulating Remotes¶

When you clone a repository, using git clone, Git will automatically register the location of the remote. However, you can also manually add or remove remotes:

# Initialise an empty repository for illustration purposes
git init

# Manually add a remote 'origin' for the current repository
git remote add origin git@ssh.dev.azure.com:v3/organisation/subdomain/Placeholder

# Manually remove remote 'origin' for the current repository
git remote rm origin

Example¶

Consider the example below:

• origin/main: Remote-tracking branch of remote main branch.
• origin/feature/algorithm: Remote-tracking branch of remote feature/algorithm branch.
• main: Local state of main branch.
• feature/api: Local state of feature/api branch.

%%{init: { 'logLevel': 'debug', 'theme': 'base', 'gitGraph': {'showBranches': true, 'showCommitLabel': false, 'mainBranchName': 'origin/main'}} }%%
gitGraph
  commit tag: "0"
  branch main order: 2
  commit tag: "1"
  commit tag: "2"
  branch feature/api order: 3
  commit tag: "3"
  checkout origin/main
  commit tag: "4"
  branch origin/feature/algorithm order: 1
  commit tag: "5"
  checkout origin/main
  commit tag: "6"

The following has happened here:

1. The repository is cloned locally from the remote state at commit tag 0.
2. Commit tag 1 & 2:
   • Two commits are made in main (local).
3. Commit tag 3:
   • A new branch feature_api is made from main and a commit is made to it (local).
4. Commit tag 4:
   • A collaborating developer has pushed a commit to the remote main branch, reflected in remote-tracking branch origin/main.
5. Commit tag 5:
   • A collaborating developer pushed a new remote branch feature/algorithm (branched from main) with a commit in it, as reflected in remote-tracking branch origin/feature/algorithm.
6. Commit tag 6:
   • A collaborating developer pushed another commit to the remote main branch, reflected in remote-tracking branch origin/main.