Cannot fetch branch from remote.

Description

I’ve reported this before, and it still is a problem. If I have branches on the origin that do not exist on my computer, I can’t find a way of adding these branches to my local repository without having to move to the command line. Which is something I don’t mind, but like to avoid anyway as our master students have the tendency to screw up royally when they touch the command line.

Version

GitHub Desktop version: 0.8.0

OS version: Windows 10

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a new branch locally
2. Click on “Publish”
3. Delete branch locally but not on the remote
4. click “Fetch origin”
5. click “Repository > Pull”
6. close and open Github desktop again
7. Repeat to check whether it will work this time
8. Give up on Github desktop and go to command line
9. git checkout --track origin/TheBranch
10. pass computers of 2 colleagues and 3 students to check whether they found the command line and did this correctly
11. realize one of them didn’t
12. spend the next 15 minutes restoring what they broke
13. report yet again and hope that this time a developer will be as kind as to implement something that avoids this ongoing frustration.

Expected behavior: I expected that fetch origin would also fetch branches on the remote and create them locally if they didn’t exist. Because one time in history, Github Desktop actually worked like that

Actual behavior: command line. Command line happened.

Reproduces how often: 100%

Logs

Additional Information

[shiftkey]

@JoFAM @iAmWillShepherd

As shown, the new_branch is indeed on the origin, but is not added to the local repository, whereas this used to be the case when we first started using Github Desktop (probably almost 2 years ago).

The classic apps (both on macOS and Windows) do not distinguish between remote and local branches in the branch selector.

EDIT: I should make this clear here - the classic apps would remove remote information in the branch list to give the illusion the branch was created locally. The underlying Git behaviour is the same as what we’re doing in the Electron app - it’s just a visual change.

While this might make sense for common scenarios, it falls over in other places:

• what if you have multiple remotes that all have the same branch?
• what if your local branch that clashes with the remote branch name, but is meant to be separate?

With the Electron version, we wanted to make this relationship more clear by:

• including the remote name for remote branches when switching branches
• including the remote name in the push/pull/fetch button, which sits alongside the branch information

This also doesn’t include new behaviour in Git itself when checking out an unknown branch - if the name of the branch matches a remote branch, Git will create a local branch and set the tracking info automatically.

Anyway, I think we’re all on the same page now so I’m going to close this out. Let me know if you have any other questions about this.

[shiftkey]

@krpkpraveen we favour having one local repository for each remote repository, and we don’t support passing --single-branch --branch [branch] when cloning in the app.