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Branches on remote Git repositories are called remote branches. These are pointers to our remote repositories, including branches, tags, etc.

Local branches only exist on each developer's local personal computer, but there is only one remote branch for all developers to merge their tasks and push to the cloud repository.

When we clone a repository, a reference to the remote origin is automatically created, which is called remote in our local environment. It helps us to check out new commits and push recent changes to the remote repository.

Git repositories preserve and track the order of defined commits in branches. We can automatically find commits in the currently assigned branch, main or master, which is the default option.

Git branches can be obtained through the Git command git branch. Branches with an asterisk ( *) can be identified as the currently active branches in the current repository.

List Git remote branches

We can list the remote branches linked to the Git repository through three different commands with different parameters listed below.

$ git branch -a

git branch -aThe command will list all the branches on your local personal branch as well as all the branches available in the remote repository.

$ git branch -r

git branch -rThe command will only list all branches available on the remote repository, not local branches on the developer's personal computer.

$ git remote show

git remote showThe command will only list all branches available on the remote repository and the associated metadata of the branches, not the local branches on the developer's personal computer.

The first two commands are often used because they list only the required branches and details. On the other hand, the last one gives us a detailed view of every branch that developers don’t need.

Tracking remote branches in Git

We will track remote branches to establish a relationship with local branches for various purposes. It helps us push or pull commits from remote to local branches to complete the work we have done in the local repository.

It also helps us discover the status of our local branch, i.e. how far ahead or behind the commits in our local branch are compared to the remote branch.

Viewing tracked remote branches in Git

To view remote tracking branches and local branches in Git, we will use the command with the flag -vvgit branch .

The result of this command is in the format of [<remote>/<branch>]. It is a list of remotes and branches.

$ git branch -vv

Changing the remote tracking of a branch in Git

Sometimes we may need to change our local branch to track some other remote branch in the same repository, to set our most recent branch as the prominent remote branch.

To do this, we will use the command git branchto track the remote branch with flag u as shown below.

git branch -u Remote2/main