[SOLVED] git fetch not fetching a remote branch on a fresh clone on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.7 (Maipo)

Issue

On RedHat server 7.7

I ran the following commands.

git clone https://github.com/postgres/postgres.git
cd postgres
git remote add upstream https://github.com/postgres/postgres.git
git fetch upstream REL_12_STABLE

The output was as follows:

From https://github.com/postgres/postgres
 * branch            REL_12_STABLE -> FETCH_HEAD

instead of

From https://github.com/postgres/postgres
* branch REL_12_STABLE -> FETCH_HEAD
* [new branch] REL_12_STABLE -> upstream/REL_12_STABLE

If i run the git branch –r command, we DO NOT see an extra upstream/REL_12_STABLE entry

While on RedHat 8 every thing works fine.

Solution

Apparently (per comments) the Git version on RH7.7 was quite old, predating Git 1.8.4. (A google search suggests that it is in fact 1.8.3.1.) Very old versions of Git like this simply fail to create-or-update remote-tracking names like upstream/REL_12_STABLE when using this form of git fetch.

There are several cures or workarounds. Here are my top-two:

• Installing a newer Git version will fix it. (Note that a custom Git might live in a different directory from the system Git. This can be messy, but is generally supposed to work. You may need to adjust your PATH setting.)
• Running git fetch upstream instead of git fetch upstream REL_12_STABLE will work around it, although this has the disadvantage of fetching everything rather than just the one branch.

Answered By - torek