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

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

git branch doesn't list test_branch, because no such local branch exist in your local repo, yet. When cloning a repo, only one local branch (master, here) is created and checked out in the resulting clone, irrespective of the number of branches that exist in the remote repo that you cloned from. At this stage, test_branch only exist in your repo as a remote-tracking branch, not as a local branch.

And when I run

git checkout test-branch

I get the following error [...]

You must be using an "old" version of Git. In more recent versions (from v1.7.0-rc0 onwards),

If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat [git checkout <branch>] as equivalent to

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

Simply run

git checkout -b test_branch --track origin/test_branch

instead. Or update to a more recent version of Git.


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?


My friend, you need to create those corresponding branches locally first, in order to check-out to those other two branches, using this line of code

git branch test-branch  

and

git branch change-the-title

then only you will be able to do git checkout to those branches

Also after creating each branch, take latest changes of those particular branches by using git pull origin branch_name as shown in below code

git branch test-branch
git checkout test-branch
git pull origin test-branch

and for other branch named change-the-title run following code =>

git branch change-the-title
git checkout change-the-title
git pull origin change-the-title

Happy programming :)