git fetch remote branch and remote ref

Question

how do I fetch a remote branch and update git's local ref for that branch without effecting the current branch? For example if I do this

$ git pull origin master

origin/master is merged into my current branch. This also doesn't work

$ git fetch origin master

As then I check

$ git branch -r -v
origin/HEAD   -> origin/master
origin/master 7cf6ec5 test 02

that origin/master ref "7cf6ec5 test 02" is behind. The real origin/master is a "XXXXXX test 03". git fetch only pulled the changes into FETCH_HEAD it didn't upload the local origin/master ref. What's the step for updating that ref?

Note:

$ git fetch origin

Will get all remote refs and update them but unfortunately that's (a) a lot of clutter. (I don't want someone else's 30-50 random branches knowing that someone wouldn't want mine) and (b) as branches are deleted on origin those refs don't get deleted locally the next time I do git fetch origin which means that path ends up with cruft.

The question is, how do fetch just one branch and update its ref locally?

Answer 1

You can always provide a refspec to the git fetch command. In particular, if you want to update other-branch, you can do:

git fetch origin other-branch:other-branch

That will fetch the current tip of refs/heads/other-branch from origin, and put it into a local branch of the same name.

Another way, is to go ahead and to:

git fetch origin other-branch

And then recreate the local branch:

git branch -l -f other-branch -t origin/other-branch

The -l is there as a safety mechanism. It'll create a reflog entry, so that you can get back to the previous version if you need to.

Answer 2

I think what I'm looking for is this

$ git fetch origin master:refs/remotes/origin/master

That does seem to work in that unlike 'git fetch origin master' I do actually see the ref get updated.

Any reason that's the wrong answer? Something I should be scared of?