GIT-FETCH(1)                                                      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
       Fetches named heads or tags from one or more other repositories, along
       with the objects necessary to complete them.


       The ref names and their object names of fetched refs are stored in
       .git/FETCH_HEAD. This information is left for a later merge operation
       done by git merge.


       When <refspec> stores the fetched result in remote-tracking branches,
       the tags that point at these branches are automatically followed. This
       is done by first fetching from the remote using the given <refspec>s,
       and if the repository has objects that are pointed by remote tags that
       it does not yet have, then fetch those missing tags. If the other end
       has tags that point at branches you are not interested in, you will not
       get them.


       git fetch can fetch from either a single named repository, 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)).


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>
              Deepen the history of a shallow repository created by git clone
              with --depth=<depth> option (see git-clone(1)) by the specified
              number of commits.


       --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
              After fetching, remove any remote-tracking branches which no
              longer exist on the remote.


       -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).


       -t, --tags
              Most of the tags are fetched automatically as branch heads are
              downloaded, but tags that do not point at objects reachable from
              the branch heads that are being tracked will not be fetched by
              this mechanism. This flag lets all tags and their associated
              objects be downloaded. The default behavior for a remote may be
              specified with the remote.<name>.tagopt setting. See
              git-config(1).


       --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&#8217;s reference to a commit that
              isn&#8217;t already in the local submodule clone.


       --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&#8217;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.


       <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>
              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 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

              If the remote branch from which you want to pull is modified in
              non-linear ways such as being rewound and rebased frequently,
              then a pull will attempt a merge with an older version of
              itself, likely conflict, and fail. It is under these conditions
              that you would want to use the + sign to indicate
              non-fast-forward updates will be needed. There is currently no
              easy 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.



              Note

              You never do your own development on branches that appear on the
              right hand side of a <refspec> colon on Pull: lines; they are to
              be updated by git fetch. If you intend to do development derived
              from a remote branch B, have a Pull: line to track it (i.e.
              Pull: B:remote-B), and have a separate branch my-B to do your
              development on top of it. The latter is created by git branch
              my-B remote-B (or its equivalent git checkout -b my-B remote-B).
              Run git fetch to keep track of the progress of the remote side,
              and when you see something new on the remote branch, merge it
              into your development branch with git pull . remote-B, while you
              are on my-B branch.



              Note

              There is a difference between listing multiple <refspec>
              directly on git pull command line and having multiple Pull:
              <refspec> lines for a <repository> and running git pull command
              without any explicit <refspec> parameters. <refspec> listed
              explicitly on the command line are always merged into the
              current branch after fetching. In other words, if you list more
              than one remote refs, you would be making an Octopus. While git
              pull run without any explicit <refspec> parameter takes default
              <refspec>s from Pull: lines, it merges only the first <refspec>
              found into the current branch, after fetching all the remote
              refs. This is because making an Octopus from remote refs is
              rarely done, while keeping track of multiple remote heads in
              one-go by fetching more than one is often useful.

       Some short-cut notations are also supported.


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

              o  A parameter <ref> without a colon is equivalent to <ref>:
                 when pulling/fetching, so it merges <ref> into the current
                 branch without storing the remote branch anywhere locally

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 natively supports ssh, git, http, https, ftp, ftps, and rsync
       protocols. The following syntaxes may be used with them:


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

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

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

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

       o  rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/

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


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

       The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:


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

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

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

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


       o  /path/to/repo.git/

       o
           file:///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&#8217;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:


       o  <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 git-remote-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:


       o  a remote in the git configuration file: $GIT_DIR/config,

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

       o  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&#8217;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>





EXAMPLES
       o  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.

       o  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.

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




                                                                  GIT-FETCH(1)
