Remote Repositories and Synchronization - Git Recipes - page 332

Now we turn an ordinary local branch master into a local tracking branch for the
remote tracking origin/master branch. This is done with:

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master

After this, $ git branch -a -vv prints:

* master 60478cc [origin/master] Bump

version to 0.3.1
remotes/origin/master 60478cc Bump version to 0.3.1

Thanks to [origin/master] in the first line we know that master is a local
tracking branch for the remote tracking branch origin/master .
The command $ branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master creates
the following entry in .git/config file:

[branch "master"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/master

This says that your local master branch is set to track the remote branch stored in
refs/heads/master in the repository pointed by origin URL. It is easier to un-
derstand the meaning of the above command with the example using a different name
for the local and remote branches. Suppose that your local repository contains an ordin-
ary local branch named foo . You want the foo branch to track the bar branch in the
remote repository. If you issue the command:

$ git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/bar foo

then the following configuration entry will be created:

[branch "foo"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/bar

The remote repository pointed by origin contains a file .git/refs/heads/
bar . This is the remote branch bar . The local repository contains .git/refs/re-
motes/origin/bar and .git/refs/heads/foo . The first file .git/refs/