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In this article, we will discuss the process of downloading a single branch from GitHub to our local machine.

This comes up when we're working as a team on a project to keep our repositories in sync with new branches. Let's jump right in!

Use git remote addthe command to clone a single GitHub branch

We can use git remote addthe command to download a single branch from a remote repository. Let's look at an example.

Sample_BranchTo simulate a scenario where we want to download a remote branch from a repo, we will create a new branch called in the remote repo .

We will now make mainthe branch the parent and Sample_Branchthe branch the child.

The next step is to run git remote addthe command to fetch the branch from our remote repository. We will run the command as shown below.

$ git remote add -f Sample_Branch https://github.com/Wachira11ke/Delftscopetech.git

Now we can use git checkoutthe command to complete the cloning process. We will run the command below.

$ git checkout -b Sample_Branch
Switched to a new branch 'Sample_Branch' #Output

That's git remote addhow we clone a single branch using the command. Now let's see how to git cloneclone a single branch using the command.

Use git clonethe command to clone a branch

We will remove the from our local repo Sample_Branchand try git cloneto clone it again using the command.

$ git branch -d Sample_Branch
Deleted branch Sample_Branch (was df90895).

We know that running the command with --single-branchthe -c flag git clonewill only clone masterthe -d branch. However, we can pass a --branch-d flag and indicate the name of the branch in the remote repository that we want to clone as shown below.

$ git clone --single-branch --branch Sample_Branch https://github.com/Wachira11ke/Delftscopetech.git

Let's check if the branch exists in our local repository.

$ git branch

Output:

$ git branch
  Sample_Branch
* main

Use git checkoutthe command to clone a single branch

We can git checkoutclone a single branch using the command as shown below. Similarly, we will delete the branch from our local repo and git checkoutdownload it using the command.

$ git branch -d Sample_Branch
Deleted branch Sample_Branch (was 216560f).

To clone our remote branch, we will run:

$ git checkout -b Sample_Branch origin/Sample_Branch

Alternatively, we can run:

$ git checkout -t Sample_Branch

The above example will download the specified remote branch to our local repository.