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I have to Git repos repo1 and repo2. There are three branches master, alpha and beta in repo1. repo2 clones from repo1.
In repo2, I can see remote tracking branches with git branch -a:
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/alpha
remotes/origin/beta
But the folder .git/refs/remotes/origin/ in repo2 only has a single file HEAD, whose content is:
ref: refs/remotes/origin/master
So this HEAD is a symbolic ref. But why does it point to a ref that doesn't exist? BTW, where does repo2 store the information of alpha and beta? (repo2 knows alpha and beta because it displays them in git branch -a.)
821
Git stores all references under the . git/refs folder and branches are stored in the directory . git/refs/heads. Since branch is a simple text file we can just create a file with the contents of a commit hash.
To view your remote branches, simply pass the -r flag to the git branch command. You can inspect remote branches with the usual git checkout and git log commands. If you approve the changes a remote branch contains, you can merge it into a local branch with a normal git merge .
If you have a single remote repository, then you can omit all arguments. just need to run git fetch , which will retrieve all branches and updates, and after that, run git checkout <branch> which will create a local copy of the branch because all branches are already loaded in your system.
The refs are probably "packed" in .git/packed-refs.
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