pushing to a remote branch that one does not own

Hello, I want to contribute via "push" to a branch which I have previously cloned from a remote repository. There is a problem:

If i create a new commit on branch "master", which coincides with
origin/master, then I can push this commit simply with
    git push
However, if i switch to a different branch of the repository which was
cloned, for example by doing:
    git checkout origin/lilt 
Then I get the message: 
"You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
... (etc)"
So I HAVE to create my own new branch based on the one downloaded in order
to start committing and pushing changes. My question is therefore: 

Am I strictly limited to committing only on the master / origin/master branched, and forced to make a new branch for every branch that I cloned from the remote repo, or is there a way of making the heads of the remote branches visible as local too?

Thanks, 

Iannis Zannos

On 11-01-19 19:16, iani wrote:

AFAIK, there's nothing special about origin, except that it's already set up to track origin/master.

You can't commit to origin/lilt just like you can't commit to origin/master. Those remote branches are there to mirror corresponding branches in the remote repo, so you can do things like git diff master origin/master

AFAIK, using git branch lilt origin/lilt you create a local branch tracking the remote one. Then you can work with it just like you work with master. You may want to have a look at .git/config for [branch <branchname>] sections or not. I'm quite a newbie, but this works for me.

Thanks a lot for the prompt answer. Following your advice I read the progit online chapter about branches and it explained to me about git branch lilt origin/lilt as Maaartin explains. So I am testing it now.

Thanks Iannis Z.

Maybe you should read "Pro Git" book chapter 3 "Git Branching" http://progit.org/book/ch3-0.html (and look forward for chapter 3.5 "Remote Branches")?