Steps to Make an Existing Git Branch Track a Remote Branch

Here’s a step-by-step guide to make an existing local Git branch track a remote branch:

Step 1: Verify Your Current Branch

Start by checking the branch you are currently on. You can do this with:

git branch

The currently active branch will be highlighted with an asterisk (*).

Step 2: Switch to the Branch You Want to Track

If you are not already on the branch you want to set up, switch to it using:

git checkout <your-branch>

Replace <your-branch> with the name of your local branch.

Step 3: Set Up Tracking with –set-upstream-to

Use the git branch command with the –set-upstream-to option to configure the local branch to track the remote branch.

git branch --set-upstream-to=<remote>/<remote-branch>

Replace <remote> with the name of your remote repository (commonly origin), and <remote-branch> with the name of the remote branch you want to track.

For example, if you want to set your local branch feature to track the remote branch feature on the origin remote, you would use:

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/feature

Step 4: Verify Tracking

After setting up the tracking, you can verify that your local branch is now tracking the remote branch:

git branch -vv

This command shows detailed information about all your branches, including the tracking information. You should see something like this:

* feature   a1b2c3d [origin/feature] Commit message here

The [origin/feature] part indicates that the local feature branch is tracking the feature branch on the origin remote.

Managing branches in Git can sometimes be confusing, especially when you need to make an existing local branch track a remote branch. This process ensures that your local branch can easily fetch updates from and push changes to the corresponding remote branch. In this article, we will walk through the steps to set up tracking for an existing Git branch.