git-fetch(1)


NAME

   git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository

SYNOPSIS

   git fetch [<options>] [<repository> [<refspec>...]]
   git fetch [<options>] <group>
   git fetch --multiple [<options>] [(<repository> | <group>)...]
   git fetch --all [<options>]

DESCRIPTION

   Fetch branches and/or tags (collectively, "refs") from one or more
   other repositories, along with the objects necessary to complete their
   histories. Remote-tracking branches are updated (see the description of
   <refspec> below for ways to control this behavior).

   By default, any tag that points into the histories being fetched is
   also fetched; the effect is to fetch tags that point at branches that
   you are interested in. This default behavior can be changed by using
   the --tags or --no-tags options or by configuring remote.<name>.tagOpt.
   By using a refspec that fetches tags explicitly, you can fetch tags
   that do not point into branches you are interested in as well.

   git fetch can fetch from either a single named repository or URL, or
   from several repositories at once if <group> is given and there is a
   remotes.<group> entry in the configuration file. (See git-config(1)).

   When no remote is specified, by default the origin remote will be used,
   unless there's an upstream branch configured for the current branch.

   The names of refs that are fetched, together with the object names they
   point at, are written to .git/FETCH_HEAD. This information may be used
   by scripts or other git commands, such as git-pull(1).

OPTIONS

   --all
       Fetch all remotes.

   -a, --append
       Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the existing
       contents of .git/FETCH_HEAD. Without this option old data in
       .git/FETCH_HEAD will be overwritten.

   --depth=<depth>
       Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip of
       each remote branch history. If fetching to a shallow repository
       created by git clone with --depth=<depth> option (see git-
       clone(1)), deepen or shorten the history to the specified number of
       commits. Tags for the deepened commits are not fetched.

   --unshallow
       If the source repository is complete, convert a shallow repository
       to a complete one, removing all the limitations imposed by shallow
       repositories.

       If the source repository is shallow, fetch as much as possible so
       that the current repository has the same history as the source
       repository.

   --update-shallow
       By default when fetching from a shallow repository, git fetch
       refuses refs that require updating .git/shallow. This option
       updates .git/shallow and accept such refs.

   --dry-run
       Show what would be done, without making any changes.

   -f, --force
       When git fetch is used with <rbranch>:<lbranch> refspec, it refuses
       to update the local branch <lbranch> unless the remote branch
       <rbranch> it fetches is a descendant of <lbranch>. This option
       overrides that check.

   -k, --keep
       Keep downloaded pack.

   --multiple
       Allow several <repository> and <group> arguments to be specified.
       No <refspec>s may be specified.

   -p, --prune
       Before fetching, remove any remote-tracking references that no
       longer exist on the remote. Tags are not subject to pruning if they
       are fetched only because of the default tag auto-following or due
       to a --tags option. However, if tags are fetched due to an explicit
       refspec (either on the command line or in the remote configuration,
       for example if the remote was cloned with the --mirror option),
       then they are also subject to pruning.

   -n, --no-tags
       By default, tags that point at objects that are downloaded from the
       remote repository are fetched and stored locally. This option
       disables this automatic tag following. The default behavior for a
       remote may be specified with the remote.<name>.tagOpt setting. See
       git-config(1).

   --refmap=<refspec>
       When fetching refs listed on the command line, use the specified
       refspec (can be given more than once) to map the refs to
       remote-tracking branches, instead of the values of remote.*.fetch
       configuration variables for the remote repository. See section on
       "Configured Remote-tracking Branches" for details.

   -t, --tags
       Fetch all tags from the remote (i.e., fetch remote tags refs/tags/*
       into local tags with the same name), in addition to whatever else
       would otherwise be fetched. Using this option alone does not
       subject tags to pruning, even if --prune is used (though tags may
       be pruned anyway if they are also the destination of an explicit
       refspec; see --prune).

   --recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]
       This option controls if and under what conditions new commits of
       populated submodules should be fetched too. It can be used as a
       boolean option to completely disable recursion when set to no or to
       unconditionally recurse into all populated submodules when set to
       yes, which is the default when this option is used without any
       value. Use on-demand to only recurse into a populated submodule
       when the superproject retrieves a commit that updates the
       submodule's reference to a commit that isn't already in the local
       submodule clone.

   -j, --jobs=<n>
       Number of parallel children to be used for fetching submodules.
       Each will fetch from different submodules, such that fetching many
       submodules will be faster. By default submodules will be fetched
       one at a time.

   --no-recurse-submodules
       Disable recursive fetching of submodules (this has the same effect
       as using the --recurse-submodules=no option).

   --submodule-prefix=<path>
       Prepend <path> to paths printed in informative messages such as
       "Fetching submodule foo". This option is used internally when
       recursing over submodules.

   --recurse-submodules-default=[yes|on-demand]
       This option is used internally to temporarily provide a
       non-negative default value for the --recurse-submodules option. All
       other methods of configuring fetch's submodule recursion (such as
       settings in gitmodules(5) and git-config(1)) override this option,
       as does specifying --[no-]recurse-submodules directly.

   -u, --update-head-ok
       By default git fetch refuses to update the head which corresponds
       to the current branch. This flag disables the check. This is purely
       for the internal use for git pull to communicate with git fetch,
       and unless you are implementing your own Porcelain you are not
       supposed to use it.

   --upload-pack <upload-pack>
       When given, and the repository to fetch from is handled by git
       fetch-pack, --exec=<upload-pack> is passed to the command to
       specify non-default path for the command run on the other end.

   -q, --quiet
       Pass --quiet to git-fetch-pack and silence any other internally
       used git commands. Progress is not reported to the standard error
       stream.

   -v, --verbose
       Be verbose.

   --progress
       Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
       when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q is specified. This
       flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream is
       not directed to a terminal.

   -4, --ipv4
       Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.

   -6, --ipv6
       Use IPv6 addresses only, ignoring IPv4 addresses.

   <repository>
       The "remote" repository that is the source of a fetch or pull
       operation. This parameter can be either a URL (see the section GIT
       URLS below) or the name of a remote (see the section REMOTES
       below).

   <group>
       A name referring to a list of repositories as the value of
       remotes.<group> in the configuration file. (See git-config(1)).

   <refspec>
       Specifies which refs to fetch and which local refs to update. When
       no <refspec>s appear on the command line, the refs to fetch are
       read from remote.<repository>.fetch variables instead (see
       CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES below).

       The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +, followed
       by the source ref <src>, followed by a colon :, followed by the
       destination ref <dst>. The colon can be omitted when <dst> is
       empty.

       tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>; it
       requests fetching everything up to the given tag.

       The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched, and if <dst> is not
       empty string, the local ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using
       <src>. If the optional plus + is used, the local ref is updated
       even if it does not result in a fast-forward update.

           Note
           When the remote branch you want to fetch is known to be rewound
           and rebased regularly, it is expected that its new tip will not
           be descendant of its previous tip (as stored in your
           remote-tracking branch the last time you fetched). You would
           want to use the + sign to indicate non-fast-forward updates
           will be needed for such branches. There is no way to determine
           or declare that a branch will be made available in a repository
           with this behavior; the pulling user simply must know this is
           the expected usage pattern for a branch.

GIT URLS

   In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
   address of the remote server, and the path to the repository. Depending
   on the transport protocol, some of this information may be absent.

   Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp, and
   ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and deprecated;
   do not use it).

   The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and
   should be used with caution on unsecured networks.

   The following syntaxes may be used with them:

   *   ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

   *   git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

   *   http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

   *   ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

   An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

   *   [user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

   This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the first
   colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a colon. For
   example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an absolute path
   or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh url.

   The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:

   *   ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

   *   git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

   *   [user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

   For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
   syntaxes may be used:

   *   /path/to/repo.git/

   *   file:///path/to/repo.git/

   These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except when cloning, when the
   former implies --local option. See git-clone(1) for details.

   When Git doesn't know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
   attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one exists. To
   explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax may be used:

   *   <transport>::<address>

   where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
   URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being invoked.
   See gitremote-helpers(1) for details.

   If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
   you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you use
   will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a configuration
   section of the form:

               [url "<actual url base>"]
                       insteadOf = <other url base>

   For example, with this:

               [url "git://git.host.xz/"]
                       insteadOf = host.xz:/path/to/
                       insteadOf = work:

   a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be
   rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be
   "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".

   If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a
   configuration section of the form:

               [url "<actual url base>"]
                       pushInsteadOf = <other url base>

   For example, with this:

               [url "ssh://example.org/"]
                       pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/

   a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to
   "ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still
   use the original URL.

REMOTES

   The name of one of the following can be used instead of a URL as
   <repository> argument:

   *   a remote in the Git configuration file: $GIT_DIR/config,

   *   a file in the $GIT_DIR/remotes directory, or

   *   a file in the $GIT_DIR/branches directory.

   All of these also allow you to omit the refspec from the command line
   because they each contain a refspec which git will use by default.

   Named remote in configuration file
   You can choose to provide the name of a remote which you had previously
   configured using git-remote(1), git-config(1) or even by a manual edit
   to the $GIT_DIR/config file. The URL of this remote will be used to
   access the repository. The refspec of this remote will be used by
   default when you do not provide a refspec on the command line. The
   entry in the config file would appear like this:

               [remote "<name>"]
                       url = <url>
                       pushurl = <pushurl>
                       push = <refspec>
                       fetch = <refspec>

   The <pushurl> is used for pushes only. It is optional and defaults to
   <url>.

   Named file in $GIT_DIR/remotes
   You can choose to provide the name of a file in $GIT_DIR/remotes. The
   URL in this file will be used to access the repository. The refspec in
   this file will be used as default when you do not provide a refspec on
   the command line. This file should have the following format:

               URL: one of the above URL format
               Push: <refspec>
               Pull: <refspec>

   Push: lines are used by git push and Pull: lines are used by git pull
   and git fetch. Multiple Push: and Pull: lines may be specified for
   additional branch mappings.

   Named file in $GIT_DIR/branches
   You can choose to provide the name of a file in $GIT_DIR/branches. The
   URL in this file will be used to access the repository. This file
   should have the following format:

               <url>#<head>

   <url> is required; #<head> is optional.

   Depending on the operation, git will use one of the following refspecs,
   if you don't provide one on the command line. <branch> is the name of
   this file in $GIT_DIR/branches and <head> defaults to master.

   git fetch uses:

               refs/heads/<head>:refs/heads/<branch>

   git push uses:

               HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES

   You often interact with the same remote repository by regularly and
   repeatedly fetching from it. In order to keep track of the progress of
   such a remote repository, git fetch allows you to configure
   remote.<repository>.fetch configuration variables.

   Typically such a variable may look like this:

       [remote "origin"]
               fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

   This configuration is used in two ways:

   *   When git fetch is run without specifying what branches and/or tags
       to fetch on the command line, e.g.  git fetch origin or git fetch,
       remote.<repository>.fetch values are used as the refspecs---they
       specify which refs to fetch and which local refs to update. The
       example above will fetch all branches that exist in the origin
       (i.e. any ref that matches the left-hand side of the value,
       refs/heads/*) and update the corresponding remote-tracking branches
       in the refs/remotes/origin/* hierarchy.

   *   When git fetch is run with explicit branches and/or tags to fetch
       on the command line, e.g.  git fetch origin master, the <refspec>s
       given on the command line determine what are to be fetched (e.g.
       master in the example, which is a short-hand for master:, which in
       turn means "fetch the master branch but I do not explicitly say
       what remote-tracking branch to update with it from the command
       line"), and the example command will fetch only the master branch.
       The remote.<repository>.fetch values determine which
       remote-tracking branch, if any, is updated. When used in this way,
       the remote.<repository>.fetch values do not have any effect in
       deciding what gets fetched (i.e. the values are not used as
       refspecs when the command-line lists refspecs); they are only used
       to decide where the refs that are fetched are stored by acting as a
       mapping.

   The latter use of the remote.<repository>.fetch values can be
   overridden by giving the --refmap=<refspec> parameter(s) on the command
   line.

OUTPUT

   The output of "git fetch" depends on the transport method used; this
   section describes the output when fetching over the Git protocol
   (either locally or via ssh) and Smart HTTP protocol.

   The status of the fetch is output in tabular form, with each line
   representing the status of a single ref. Each line is of the form:

        <flag> <summary> <from> -> <to> [<reason>]

   The status of up-to-date refs is shown only if the --verbose option is
   used.

   In compact output mode, specified with configuration variable
   fetch.output, if either entire <from> or <to> is found in the other
   string, it will be substituted with * in the other string. For example,
   master -> origin/master becomes master -> origin/*.

   flag
       A single character indicating the status of the ref:

       (space)
           for a successfully fetched fast-forward;

       +
           for a successful forced update;

       -
           for a successfully pruned ref;

       t
           for a successful tag update;

       *
           for a successfully fetched new ref;

       !
           for a ref that was rejected or failed to update; and

       =
           for a ref that was up to date and did not need fetching.

   summary
       For a successfully fetched ref, the summary shows the old and new
       values of the ref in a form suitable for using as an argument to
       git log (this is <old>..<new> in most cases, and <old>...<new> for
       forced non-fast-forward updates).

   from
       The name of the remote ref being fetched from, minus its
       refs/<type>/ prefix. In the case of deletion, the name of the
       remote ref is "(none)".

   to
       The name of the local ref being updated, minus its refs/<type>/
       prefix.

   reason
       A human-readable explanation. In the case of successfully fetched
       refs, no explanation is needed. For a failed ref, the reason for
       failure is described.

EXAMPLES

   *   Update the remote-tracking branches:

           $ git fetch origin

       The above command copies all branches from the remote refs/heads/
       namespace and stores them to the local refs/remotes/origin/
       namespace, unless the branch.<name>.fetch option is used to specify
       a non-default refspec.

   *   Using refspecs explicitly:

           $ git fetch origin +pu:pu maint:tmp

       This updates (or creates, as necessary) branches pu and tmp in the
       local repository by fetching from the branches (respectively) pu
       and maint from the remote repository.

       The pu branch will be updated even if it is does not fast-forward,
       because it is prefixed with a plus sign; tmp will not be.

   *   Peek at a remote's branch, without configuring the remote in your
       local repository:

           $ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git maint
           $ git log FETCH_HEAD

       The first command fetches the maint branch from the repository at
       git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git and the second command
       uses FETCH_HEAD to examine the branch with git-log(1). The fetched
       objects will eventually be removed by git's built-in housekeeping
       (see git-gc(1)).

BUGS

   Using --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in already
   checked out submodules right now. When e.g. upstream added a new
   submodule in the just fetched commits of the superproject the submodule
   itself can not be fetched, making it impossible to check out that
   submodule later without having to do a fetch again. This is expected to
   be fixed in a future Git version.

SEE ALSO

   git-pull(1)

GIT

   Part of the git(1) suite





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