How to clone and work with a specific branch from a remote repository

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1

I need help figuring out how to clone a specific branch from a remote repository instead of the main branch. I’m working with a project called user_authentication and I want to get the experimental branch rather than the default one.

I’ve been trying different git commands but keep running into issues. Here are some of the approaches I attempted:

git checkout --track -b local_exp origin/experimental

and also tried:

git checkout --track -b local_exp git://github.com/username/user-authentication.git/experimental

But I keep getting this error message:

fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches

What’s the right way to clone and track a remote branch that isn’t the default one? I’m pretty new to git branching so any step by step guidance would be really helpful.

2

hey laura! u’re mixing up clone and checkout. just use git clone -b experimental https://github.com/username/user-authentication.git to grab that specific branch directly. much easier than all those checkout commands u’re running after.