How do I add a branch from a new remote to an existing Git project?

I have an existing local Git repository and would like to add a branch corresponding to a branch on an unrelated remote Git repo (ideally without the full history⁺), from which I may occasionally pull updates. I've been struggling with how to accomplish this and have come up with

git checkout -b template
git remote add framework <repo_url>
git pull --rebase=true framework template:template --force

and wonder if this is really the best way to go about it.

Is there a more compact or more idiomatic way to add a branch from a new remote to an existing Git project?

⁺The issue with attempting to get just a partial history (with --depth as an additional option to the pull is that it creates a structure that crashes all my Git tools (Tower, GitX, etc.).

Solution

Set up the remote with

git remote add -t template -f framework <repo_url>

which will also fetch the ref for just the one branch on the remote; and then checkout the branch into a new local branch using

git checkout -b template framework/template

Now you can pull this branch from your original remote from the local branch using

git pull