Forking only a specific branch from Github repository
You can pull his branch into your local git repo, and then push it up to your GitHub hosted repo.
First, add a remote to this other users's GitHub page
git remote add other-user http://github.com/otheruser/repo
Then make a local checkout of that branch in your repo.
git checkout -b B4 other-user/B4
Finally, push that branch up to your repo hosted on GitHub.
git push origin B4:B4
Although the answer provided by @keelerm , is correct, but it may lead to some confusions because of the naming convention followed in that answer.
Let's assume the user, whose branch you want to clone has the github username Naruto
. So, basically put Naruto
has created a branch B4
from the official repository O
that you want on your system.
First, check whether you have
Naruto
's remote already added usinggit remote -v
. If you see something along the lines ofhttps://github.com/Naruto/O (fetch)
andhttps://github.com/Naruto/O (push)
, you already have the remote added. Skip to step 3.In this step, we'll add the remote of
Naruto
's fork ofO
so that we can fetch all information from it. Choose any handy name that you'll use to refer to the remote. For illustration purposes, I'll useKyuubi
. Use this command:git remote add Kyuubi https://github.com/Naruto/O
Now, you need to fetch the changes from
Naruto
's repository. Use this command:git fetch Kyuubi
In this step we'll create our own branch called
myB4
fromNaruto
'sB4
. Use this command:git checkout -b myB4 Naruto/B4
If you need this
myB4
branch to be reflected right away in your Github too, with the same name, use this command:git push origin myB4:myB4
That is it. Now you have a branch named myB4
from Naruto
's forked repository O
and your branch myB4
contains the same information as Naruto
's B4
.
Add that user's repository as a "remote repository" of your working directory:
git remote add someuser https://github.com/someuser/somerepo.git
Once you've done that, you need to fetch the changes from that user's repository. Later on, you can do that at any time, without affecting anything else in your local repo.
git fetch someuser
And branch that user's B4
into your own B5
:
git checkout -b B5 someuser/B4
That is, create a new branch (-b
) called B5
, using someuser/B4
as the starting point.