How can I check out a GitHub pull request with git?

Question

I'd like to check out a previously created pull request (created via GitHub web interface). I searched and found different places where a refs/pull or refs/pull/pr

But when I add fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/* to the git config file and do a git fetch

What I'm doing wrong? Should GitHub create automatically the pull/xyz stuff, or do I have to configure something?

Answer 1

To fetch a remote PR into your local repo,

git fetch origin pull/$ID/head:$BRANCHNAME

where $ID is the pull request id and $BRANCHNAME is the name of the new branch that you want to create. Once you have created the branch, then simply

git checkout $BRANCHNAME

For instance, let's imagine you want to checkout pull request #2 from the origin main branch:

git fetch origin pull/2/head:MASTER

See the official GitHub documentation for more.

Answer 2

This will fetch without you having to name a branch:

git pull origin pull/939/head

How do I get a specific pull request on my machine?

Answer 3

I prefer to fetch and checkout without creating a local branch and to be in HEAD detached state. It allows me quickly to check the pull request without polluting my local machine with unnecessary local branches.

git fetch upstream pull/ID/head && git checkout FETCH_HEAD

where ID is a pull request ID and upstream where is original pull request has been created (it could be origin, for example).

I hope it helps.