How to pull remote branch from somebody else's repo

Question

I've got a project hosted on GitHub which somebody has forked. On their fork, they've created a new branch "foo" and made some changes. How do I pull their "foo" into a new branch also named "foo" in my repo?

I understand they could submit a pull request to me, but I'd like to initiate this process myself.

Assume the following:

1. Because they forked my project, both our repos share the same 'history'
2. Although GitHub shows their project was forked from mine, my local repository doesn't have any references to this person's project. Do I need to add theirs as a remote?
3. I don't have a branch called "foo" yet - I don't know if I need to manually create this first.
4. I definitely want this pulled into a separate branch and not my master.

Answer 1

git remote add coworker git://path/to/coworkers/repo.git git fetch coworker git checkout --track coworker/foo 

This will setup a local branch foo, tracking the remote branch coworker/foo. So when your co-worker has made some changes, you can easily pull them:

git checkout foo git pull 

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Response to comments:

Cool :) And if I'd like to make my own changes to that branch, should I create a second local branch "bar" from "foo" and work there instead of directly on my "foo"?

You don't need to create a new branch, even though I recommend it. You might as well commit directly to foo and have your co-worker pull your branch. But that branch already exists and your branch foo need to be setup as an upstream branch to it:

git branch --set-upstream foo colin/foo 

assuming colin is your repository (a remote to your co-workers repository) defined in similar way:

git remote add colin git://path/to/colins/repo.git 

Answer 2

No, you don't need to add them as a remote. That would be clumbersome and a pain to do each time.

Grabbing their commits:

git fetch [email protected]:theirusername/reponame.git theirbranch:ournameforbranch 

This creates a local branch named ournameforbranch which is exactly the same as what theirbranch was for them. For the question example, the last argument would be foo:foo.

Note :ournameforbranch part can be further left off if thinking up a name that doesn't conflict with one of your own branches is bothersome. In that case, a reference called FETCH_HEAD is available. You can git log FETCH_HEAD to see their commits then do things like cherry-picked to cherry pick their commits.

Pushing it back to them:

Oftentimes, you want to fix something of theirs and push it right back. That's possible too:

git fetch [email protected]:theirusername/reponame.git theirbranch git checkout FETCH_HEAD  # fix fix fix  git push [email protected]:theirusername/reponame.git HEAD:theirbranch 

If working in detached state worries you, by all means create a branch using :ournameforbranch and replace FETCH_HEAD and HEAD above with ournameforbranch.