github - error: pathspec 'test-branch' did not match any file(s) known to git

Question

I am a new user of Git. I have forked a repository called Spoon-Knife (available for practicing forking with Git). Then, I cloned it locally by running

git clone https://github.com/rohinichoudhary/Spoon-Knife.git

This repository contains three branches, i.e.

• master,
• test-branch,
• change-the-title.

When I run git branch, it only shows *master, not the remaining two branches. And when I run

git checkout test-branch

I get the following error:

error: pathspec 'test-branch' did not match any file(s) known to git.

Why is this happening? How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

The modern Git should able to detect remote branches and create a local one on checkout.

However if you did a shallow clone (e.g. with --depth 1), try the following commands to correct it:

git config remote.origin.fetch '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*'
git fetch --all

and try to checkout out the branch again.

Alternatively try to unshallow your clone, e.g. git fetch --unshallow and try again.

^{See also: How to fetch all remote branches?}