Re: Difficulties in advertising a new branch to git newbies

How about this:

Create a directory, change into it and run git-init-db.
Get the latest version:
$ git fetch --force URL branch:origin
$ git reset --hard origin
Warning: this will overwrite changes you made to files in the
repository (e.g. the Makefile).

You can also drop the --force if you're sure your branch will always fast-forward.