Git Version Control Cookbook - Second Edition

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You can also add a remote to an existing branch, which is very handy when you realize that you actually wanted a remote tracking branch but forgot to add the tracking information while creating the branch:

1. Start by creating a local branch at the 2e0d17 commit:

$ git checkout -b remoteBugFix2 2e0d17 
Switched to a new branch 'remoteBugFix2' 

2. The remoteBugFix2 branch is just a local branch at the moment with no tracking information; to set the tracking branch, we need to use --set-upstream-to or -u as a flag to the git branch command:

$ git branch --set-upstream-to origin/stable-3.2 
Branch remoteBugFix2 set up to track remote branch stable-3.2 from origin. 

3. As you can see from the Git output, we are now tracking the stable-3.2 ...