What are the differences between local branch, local tracking branch, remote branch and remote tracking branch?

Question

I just started using Git and I got really confused between different branches. Can anyone help me to figure out what the following branch types are? - local branches - local tracking branches - remote branches - remote tracking branches What is the difference between them? And how do they work with each other? A quick demo code will be really helpful I guess.

Accepted Answer

A local branch is a branch that only you (the local user) can see. It exists only on your local machine.

```
git branch myNewBranch        # Create local branch named "myNewBranch"
```

A remote branch is a branch on a remote location (in most cases `origin`). You can push the newly created local branch `myNewBranch` to `origin`. Now other users can track it.

```
git push -u origin myNewBranch   # Pushes your newly created local branch "myNewBranch"
                                 # to the remote "origin".
                                 # So now a new branch named "myNewBranch" is
                                 # created on the remote machine named "origin"
```

A remote tracking branch is a local copy of a remote branch. When `myNewBranch` is pushed to `origin` using the command above, a remote tracking branch named `origin/myNewBranch` is created on your machine. This remote tracking branch tracks the remote branch `myNewBranch` on `origin`. You can update your remote tracking branch to be in sync with the remote branch using `git fetch` or `git pull`.

```
git pull origin myNewBranch      # Pulls new commits from branch "myNewBranch" 
                                 # on remote "origin" into remote tracking
                                 # branch on your machine "origin/myNewBranch".
                                 # Here "origin/myNewBranch" is your copy of
                                 # "myNewBranch" on "origin"
```

A local tracking branch is a local branch that is tracking another branch. This is so that you can push/pull commits to/from the other branch. Local tracking branches in most cases track a remote tracking branch. When you push a local branch to `origin` using the `git push` command with a `-u` option (as shown above), you set up the local branch `myNewBranch` to track the remote tracking branch `origin/myNewBranch`. This is needed to use `git push` and `git pull` without specifying an upstream to push to or pull from.

```
git checkout myNewBranch      # Switch to myNewBranch
git pull                      # Updates remote tracking branch "origin/myNewBranch"
                              # to be in sync with the remote branch "myNewBranch"
                              # on "origin".
                              # Pulls these new commits from "origin/myNewBranch"
                              # to local branch "myNewBranch which you just switched to.
```

What are the differences between local branch, local tracking branch, remote branch and remote tracking branch?

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