/playground

playground

Strange behavior in git:

to reproduce type in the following commands:

mkdir -p /tmp/behavior
cd /tmp/behavior
git init
mkdir folder1
touch folder1/file1.txt
git add -A
git commit -m "commit Message"
git checkout -b folder1
touch folder1/file2.txt
git add -A
git commit -m "another commit Message"
git checkout -b folder1a
touch folder1/file3.txt
git add -A
git commit -m "another commit Message"

now create a github.com repository, i.e.: behavior-example lets push it to github:

git remote add origin https://github.com/yourusername/behavior-example.git
git remote -v
git push origin	master
git push origin folder1
git push origin folder1a

now clone this repo to verify the strange behavior:

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/behavior-example.git
cd behavior-example
git branch -a
git checkout folder1
git branch
# STILL ON MASTER
git checkout folder1a
# NOW IT WORKS

i don't know why this is happening but it looks like folder and branches should not have the same name.

possible solution

to avoid this problem, you have 2 options.

  1. you can set better branch-names like wip/folder.
  2. after cloning the repo, checkout the branch with option -t origin/branchnam, this will write the right config in .git/config. You need to do this just for the first time. After that the next checkouts will work as expected.
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/behavior-example.git
cd behavior-example
git checkout -t origin/behavior-example
git branch
# Changed to branch behavior-example
git checkout master
# back in master branch
git checkout behavior-example
# Now it works as it should

refer to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18833617/why-does-git-checkout-remote-branchname-not-create-new-tracking-branch/18995918#18995918