How do i switch branch in git?

Question

I have executed the line below to switch to a new branch created by my teammate:

git checkout with-backend

I'm receiving the error below: error: pathspec 'with-backend' did not match any file(s) known to git

I tried executing this command:

git branch -a

The with-backend branch created by my teammate is not listed. Below is the result listed:

* main
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/main
  remotes/origin/main

Try issuing `git fetch` before executing these commands. – Bernardo Duarte Jul 13 '21 at 03:39 — Bernardo Duarte, Jul 13 '21 at 03:39

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '21 at 06:40

First, switching branch is done with git switch (since Git 2.23, Q3 2019), not git checkout (which tries to manage both files and branches, making it confusing)

Second, git switch with-backend will work after git fetch because if its "guessing" mode:

If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat as equivalent to
$ git switch -c <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 13 '21 at 06:01

Make sure you always pull latest changes from repo, before starting to work

git fetch <-- fetches all the latest changes from remote repo

OR

git pull <-- It is one step ahead of git fetch, it fetches remote changes and also merge local branch with remote branch

How do i switch branch in git?

2 Answers2