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How to pull branch that is called “tag”

I have just begun to work on a new branch that someone has cleverly called tag. Now when I try to pull the changes, using:

git pull origin tag

I get the error:

fatal: You need to specify a tag name.

Which I can only assume is because tag is a keyword... I have tried to use single/double quotes:

git pull origin 'tag' then I tried...
git pull origin "tag" then...
git pull origin `tag` ...you get the gist...
git pull origin <tag>
git pull origin \tag

to pull but I get the same result.

Is there a method to use that allows you to pull changes from a keyword-named branch?

Solution 
  • git pull <remote> <refspec>

    Since that second parameter is a refspec, you can use the extended syntax to make sure that Git doesn’t try to do something with tags there. The extended syntax is localbranch:remotebranch. So if you just want to pull the tag branch, you can do this:

    git pull origin tag:tag

    The same problem appears with git push btw. and can be worked around in the same way:

    git push origin tag:tag