About

Tracking branches are local branches that have set their upstream branch.

Technically, when a local branch got an upstream, a tracking branch is created as a local reference to a remote branch and is not a local branch.

The local branches have then a direct relationship with their upstream branch that can be:

When you pull, Git automatically knows:

Management

Create

Check out a remote branch

Checking out a local branch from a remote-tracking branch automatically creates a tracking branch (and the branch it tracks is called an upstream branch).

If the branch name you’re trying to checkout doesn’t exist and exactly matches a name on only one remote, Git will create a tracking branch for you 

git checkout remote/branchName

Branch branchNameset up to track remote branch branchName from remote.
Switched to a new branch 'branchName'

Other syntax: 

git checkout --track remote/branchName
git checkout -b <branch> <remote>/<branch>

Setting the upstream branch

git checkout --track remote/branchName

List

git fetch --all

git branch -vv

iss53     7e424c3 [origin/iss53: ahead 2] forgot the brackets
  master    1ae2a45 [origin/master] deploying index fix
* serverfix f8674d9 [teamone/server-fix-good: ahead 3, behind 1] this should do it
  testing   5ea463a trying something new

where:

  • branch iss53 is tracking origin/iss53 and is
    • ahead by two commit (two commits were not pushed to the server)
  • the branch server-fix-good branch on the teamone server is:
    • ahead by three (three commits locally that we haven’t pushed)
    • behind by one (one commit on the server has not been merged)

Documentation / Reference