yes (except for the discrepancy between master4 and master8 above), but as I understand things this is only needed after a shallow clone (using --depth).

This code snippet shows a way to make all branches available locally:

import git
repo = git.Repo('/tmp/g2')
repo.git.remote('set-branches','origin','*')
repo.git.fetch()
branchlist = [i.strip() for i in repo.git.branch('-r').split('\n') if '->' not in i]