working on the git branch code distributively

I've been doing a lot of reading, but am still not too clear on how to work on a git branch in different places. How to do that?

First of all, the reason that I have to work in a branch is that I do have an "upstream" repo, which I need to rebase into my master from time to time. So to keep my addons clean from upstream, I need to work on a git branch.

UPDATE2:

Ok. It's far more complicated than I thought now. The way I did from the source location was, git checkout -b newfeature then pushed wth git push -u origin newfeature, which was done on top of a "upstream" repo, plus my own master repo, setup following the direction of

• Keeping A GitHub Fork Updated and
• How do I update a GitHub forked repository?

The problem is that I want to work on such git branch just as working in a normal git -- i.e., when I do some kind of git push, I'm expecting to do some kind of git pull from another location to get the latest updates.

When I'm doing git pull from my second place, I got Already up-to-date. I.e., the remote branch that I want to work on is not available for me.

PS. Info I've found, from http://longair.net/blog/2009/04/16/git-fetch-and-merge/

If you want to create a local branch based on a remote-tracking branch (i.e. in order to actually work on it) you can do that with git branch –track or git checkout –track -b, which is similar but it also switches your working tree to the newly created local branch. For example, if you see in git branch -r that there’s a remote-tracking branch called origin/refactored that you want, you would use the command:

git checkout --track -b refactored origin/refactored

However, this is what I got from git branch -r on the source location.

$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/master

I.e., there is no remote-tracking branch called origin/something, but I'm clearly working in a branch:

$ git status . 
On branch newfeature
nothing to commit, working directory clean

$ git branch -vv
  master     55e1d6f [origin/master] Remove ...
* newfeature 8c4266a - [+] add ...

Since that -r means for remote-tracking branches, I got same result for git branch -r from my second place as well.

According to
checkout tracked remote branch, I think the problem is at my source end, I.e., I don't see my branch listed in the tracked remote branch section. Here is mine:

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: git@github.com:me/myproj.git
  Push  URL: git@github.com:me/myproj.git
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branch:
    master tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    master     merges with remote master
    newfeature merges with remote newfeature
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    master     pushes to master     (up to date)
    newfeature pushes to newfeature (up to date)

When I do git remote show origin from my second place, I don't see the newfeature listed there.

UPDATE: According to “Tracking Branches” And “Remote-Tracking Branches”,

Remote Tracking Branches should not be modified by users (don’t set your git branch to a remote tracking branch via git checkout and then try to modify the remote tracking branch).

So I shouldn't use the Remote Tracking Branches for my case?

Confused. Please help.

UPDATE:

I see the newfeature in the git ls-remote from my second place:

$ git ls-remote
From git@github.com:me/myproj.git
55e1d6fd9048336c7f0b178fbbf78231ca28ff06        HEAD
55e1d6fd9048336c7f0b178fbbf78231ca28ff06        refs/heads/master
8c4266a6a98f498c129a2a9e806e00e6c6d196b1        refs/heads/newfeature
8c4266a6a98f498c129a2a9e806e00e6c6d196b1        refs/tags/v1

However, I don't know how to use it from my second place:

$ git checkout --track -b newfeature
Branch newfeature set up to track local branch master.
Switched to a new branch 'newfeature'

and git log is not showing the commits I've published to github.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the -b? Well, I must:

$ git checkout --track newfeature
fatal: Missing branch name; try -b

$ git checkout newfeature
error: pathspec 'newfeature' did not match any file(s) known to git.