Remote Repositories and Synchronization - Git Recipes - page 399

• When you commit with $ git commit you move your local tracking
branch forward.
• When you fetch with $ git fetch you move your remote tracking
branch forward.

• When you push with $ git push you move the remote branch and the
remote tracking branch forward.

The tracking can be always inspected with the $ git branch -a -vv com-
mand. The output lists:

• Ordinary local branches as:

lorem a1b2c3f Some commend

• Local tracking branches as:

ipsum a1b2c3f [origin/ipsum] Some comment

• Remote tracking branches as:

remotes/origin/dolor a1b2c3f Some comment

The $ git branch -a -vv command doesn't list remote branches. To list re-
mote branches you have to first fetch them with $ git fetch . We can say that $
git branch is a local command—it doesn't perform a network transfer between
your local and remote repositories.
You will find the exact procedures to set and remove tracking in Recipes 10-4 and
10-5. They are quite simple if you understand the role of each type of branches.
The distributed role of git was underlined by recipes that presented team work with
and without a central repository. To grasp the idea even further try to run the following
command in any of the repositories:

$ git fetch --no-tags https://github.com/github/GitPad
master:refs/remotes/xyz/pqr

The command fetches the master branch from the repository ht-
tps://github.com/github/GitPad and stores it in the .git/refs/re-
motes/xyz/pqr file. The operation copies the revisions from the GitPad repository