Feature Proposal: Track all branches from a given remote

Hello git experts:

Recently, I've encountered the problem where I would like to set my local repository copy to track all branches on a given remote. There does not appear to be a switch for this in the git-branch command currently, however, I will admit that my somewhat limited understanding of the git-branch manpage might be causing me simply not to see it.

It seems as though this is a use case that some users of git encounter now and then, as illustrated by this post:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/6300386/281460

I was thinking that it might be useful to add a new option to git branch, perhaps something like:

git-branch --track-remote <remotename>

Where <remotename> specifies a given remote, and the command will track all branches remotes/<remotename>/* to refs/heads/*.

So, for example, if I were to run:

git-branch --track-remote origin

and I had two branches on origin, master and maint, respectively, after the command finishes, my local repo would now have two branches, master (set up to track origin/master), and maint (setup to track origin/maint).

I'm not entirely sure how to handle naming conflicts, for example if 'maint' already existed on another remote, and was set up to track from that remote previous to this invocation of the command.

If I were to start work on a patch, would there be any interest in this feature, or are there reasons why it isn't currently implemented?

Thank you,

~Scott Johnson