What is the difference between git pull and git fetch

Question

What are the differences between git pull and git fetch

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The Difference between GIT Fetch and GIT Pull can be explained with the following scenario   Keeping in mind that pictures speak louder than words   I have provided pictorial representation  Let s take an example that you are working on a project with your team members  So there will be one main Branch of the project and all the contributors must fork it to their own local repository and then work on this local branch to modify Add modules then push back to the main branch  So  Initial State of the two Branches when you forked the main project on your local repository will be like this-  A  B and C are Modules already completed of the project   Now  you have started working on the new module  suppose D   and when you have completed the D module you want to push it to the main branch  But meanwhile what happens is that one of your teammates has developed new Module E  F and modified C  So now what has happened is that your local repository is lacking behind the original progress of the project and thus pushing of your changes to the main branch can lead to conflict and may cause your Module D to malfunction   To avoid such issues and to work parallel with the original progress of the project there are Two ways  1  Git Fetch- This will Download all the changes that have been made to the origin main branch project which are not present in your local branch  And will wait for the Git Merge command to apply the changes that have been fetched to your Repository or branch   So now You can carefully monitor the files before merging it to your repository  And you can also modify D if required because of Modified C   2  Git Pull- This will update your local branch with the origin main branch i e  actually what it does is a combination of Git Fetch and Git merge one after another  But this may Cause Conflicts to occur  so it   s recommended to use Git Pull with a clean copy

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You can fetch from a remote repository  see the differences and then pull or merge   This is an example for a remote repository called origin and a branch called master tracking the remote branch origin master   git checkout master                                                   git fetch                                         git diff origin master git rebase origin master

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One use case of git fetch is that the following will tell you any changes in the remote branch since your last pull    so you can check before doing an actual pull  which could change files in your current branch and working copy   git fetch git diff    origin   See  https   git-scm com docs git-diff regarding double- and triple-dot syntax in the diff command

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The only difference between git pull and git fetch is that    git pull pulls from a remote branch and merges it   git fetch only fetches from the remote branch but it does not merge  i e  git pull   git fetch   git merge

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This graphic could be of help  git pull is essentially equivalent to git fetch then git merge

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Git obtains the branch of the latest version from the remote to the local using two commands     git fetch  Git is going to get the latest version from remote to local   but it do not automatically merge           git fetch origin master git log -p master  origin master git merge origin master           The commands above mean that download latest version of the main branch from origin from the remote to origin master branch  And then compares the local master branch and origin master branch  Finally  merge   git pull  Git is going to get the latest version from the remote and merge into the local          git pull origin master           The command above is the equivalent to git fetch and git merge  In practice  git fetch maybe more secure because before the merge we can see the changes and decide whether to merge

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All branches are stored in  git refs  All local branches are stored in  git refs heads  All remote branches are stored in  git refs remotes     The git fetch command downloads commits  files  and refs from a   remote repository into your local repo  Fetching is what you do when   you want to see what everybody else has been working on    So when you do git fetch all the files  commits  and  refs are downloaded in   this directory  git refs remotes  You can switch to these branches to see the changes   Also  you can merge them if you want      git pull  just downloads these changes and also merges them to the   current branch    Example  If you want see the work of remote branch dev jd feature auth  you just need to do   git fetch origin dev jd feature auth  to see the changes or work progress do    git checkout dev jd feature auth  But  If you also want to fetch and merge them in the current branch do   git pull origin dev jd feature auth  If you do git fetch origin branch name  it will fetch the branch  now you can switch to this branch you want and see the changes  Your local master or other local branches won t be affected  But git pull origin branch name will fetch the branch and will also merge to the current branch

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A git repository contains immutable data blobs and a few mutable pointers references names  we call them branches  HEADS  for usability  in theory  git could be a pure append-only store  accessed only by commit hashes   The immutable blobs are usually always eventually shared among all contributors  Every developer has a copy of all of these on his machine  git fetch downloads the latest blobs and remote mutable files to your machine  It does not change your mutable files nor create any blobs that did not previously exist somewhere  git pull is git fetch then git merge  git merge creates new blobs that never existed in the remote repository before and updates your mutable files  your references

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Git Fetch  Helps you to get known about the latest updates from a git repository  Let s say you working in a team using GitFlow  where team working on multiple branches   features    With git fetch --all command you can get known about all new branches within repository   Mostly git fetch is used with git reset  For example you want to revert all your local changes to the current repository state   git fetch --all    get known about latest updates git reset --hard origin  branch     revert to current branch state   Git pull  This command update your branch with current repository branch state  Let s continue with GitFlow  Multiple feature branches was merged to develop branch and when you want to develop new features for the project you must go to the develop branch and do a git pull to get the current state of develop branch     Documentation for GitFlow https   gist github com peterdeweese 4251497

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The only difference between git pull and git fetch is that    git pull pulls from a remote branch and merges it   git fetch only fetches from the remote branch but it does not merge  i e  git pull   git fetch   git merge

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In the simplest terms  git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge  You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs remotes  lt remote gt    This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs heads  and is safe to do without changing your working copy  I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background  although I wouldn t recommend doing this   A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version  while also updating your other remote-tracking branches  From the Git documentation for git pull   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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Git Fetch  Helps you to get known about the latest updates from a git repository  Let s say you working in a team using GitFlow  where team working on multiple branches   features    With git fetch --all command you can get known about all new branches within repository   Mostly git fetch is used with git reset  For example you want to revert all your local changes to the current repository state   git fetch --all    get known about latest updates git reset --hard origin  branch     revert to current branch state   Git pull  This command update your branch with current repository branch state  Let s continue with GitFlow  Multiple feature branches was merged to develop branch and when you want to develop new features for the project you must go to the develop branch and do a git pull to get the current state of develop branch     Documentation for GitFlow https   gist github com peterdeweese 4251497

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I like to have some visual representation of the situation to grasp these things  Maybe other developers would like to see it too  so here s my addition  I m not totally sure that it all is correct  so please comment if you find any mistakes                                            LOCAL SYSTEM                                                                                                                                                         REMOTE REPOSITORY   REMOTE REPOSITORY  LOCAL REPOSITORY     WORKING COPY  ORIGIN              CACHED             for example         mirror of the       a github repo       remote repo Can also be         multiple repo s                                             FETCH   ------------------ gt   Your local cache of the remote is updated with the origin  or multiple external sources  that is git s distributed nature                      PULL    -------------------------------------------------------- gt   changes are merged directly into your local copy  when conflicts occur   you are asked for decisions                      COMMIT                                            lt ---------------  When coming from  for example  subversion  you might think that a commit will update the origin  In git  a commit is only done to your local repo                      PUSH     lt ---------------------------------------  Synchronizes your changes back into the origin    Some major advantages for having a fetched mirror of the remote are    Performance  scroll through all commits and messages without trying to squeeze it through the network  Feedback about the state of your local repo  for example  I use Atlassian s SourceTree  which will give me a bulb indicating if I m commits ahead or behind compared to the origin  This information can be updated with a GIT FETCH

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Actually Git maintains a copy of your own code and  the remote repository   The command git fetch makes your local copy up to date by getting data from remote repository  The reason we need this is because somebody else might have made some changes to the code and you want to keep yourself updated     The command git pull brings the changes in the remote repository to where you keep your own code  Normally  git pull does this by doing a    git fetch    first to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then it merges the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy

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git fetch pulls down the code from the remote server to your tracking branches in your local repository   If your remote is named origin  the default  then these branches will be within origin   for example origin master  origin mybranch-123  etc   These are not your current branches  they are local copies of those branches from the server   git pull does a git fetch but then also merges the code from the tracking branch into your current local version of that branch   If you re not ready for that changes yet  just git fetch first

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This interactive graphical representation is very helpful in understanging git  http   ndpsoftware com git-cheatsheet html   git fetch just  downloads  the changes from the remote to your local repository  git pull downloads the changes and merges them into your current branch   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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Trying to be clear and simple   The git pull command is actually a shortcut for git fetch followed by the git merge or the git rebase command depending on your configuration  You can configure your Git repository so that git pull is a fetch followed by a rebase

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What is the difference between git pull and git fetch    To understand this  you first need to understand that your local git maintains not only your local repository  but it also maintains a local copy of the remote repository   git fetch brings your local copy of the remote repository up to date  For example  if your remote repository is GitHub - you may want to fetch any changes made in the remote repository to your local copy of it the remote repository  This will allow you to perform operations such as compare or merge   git pull on the other hand will bring down the changes in the remote repository to where you keep your own code  Typically  git pull will do a git fetch first to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then it will merge the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy

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A git repository contains immutable data blobs and a few mutable pointers references names  we call them branches  HEADS  for usability  in theory  git could be a pure append-only store  accessed only by commit hashes   The immutable blobs are usually always eventually shared among all contributors  Every developer has a copy of all of these on his machine  git fetch downloads the latest blobs and remote mutable files to your machine  It does not change your mutable files nor create any blobs that did not previously exist somewhere  git pull is git fetch then git merge  git merge creates new blobs that never existed in the remote repository before and updates your mutable files  your references

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Briefly git fetch is similar to pull but doesn t merge  i e  it fetches remote updates  refs and objects  but your local stays the same  i e  origin master gets updated but master stays the same    git pull pulls down from a remote and instantly merges  More git clone clones a repo  git rebase saves stuff from your current branch that isn t in the upstream branch to a temporary area  Your branch is now the same as before you started your changes  So  git pull -rebase will pull down the remote changes  rewind your local branch  replay your changes over the top of your current branch one by one until you re up-to-date  Also  git branch -a will show you exactly what   s going on with all your branches - local and remote  This blog post was useful  The difference between git pull  git fetch and git clone  and git rebase  - Mike Pearce and covers git pull  git fetch  git clone and git rebase  UPDATE I thought I d update this to show how you d actually use this in practice   Update your local repo from the remote  but don t merge    git fetch    After downloading the updates  let s see the differences   git diff master origin master    If you re happy with those updates  then merge   git pull    Notes  On step 2  For more on diffs between local and remotes  see  How to compare a local git branch with its remote branch  On step 3  It s probably more accurate  e g  on a fast changing repo  to do a git rebase origin here  See  Justin Ohms comment in another answer  See also  http   longair net blog 2009 04 16 git-fetch-and-merge

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Git Fetch  You download changes to your local branch from origin through fetch  Fetch asks the remote repo for all commits that others have made but you don t have on your local repo  Fetch downloads these commits and adds them to the local repository   Git Merge  You can apply changes downloaded through fetch using the merge command  Merge will take the commits retrieved from fetch and try to add them to your local branch  The merge will keep the commit history of your local changes so that when you share your branch with push  Git will know how others can merge your changes   Git Pull  Fetch and merge run together often enough that a command that combines the two  pull  was created  Pull does a fetch and then a merge to add the downloaded commits into your local branch

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git pull      git fetch   git merge    git fetch does not changes to local branches   If you already have a local repository with a remote set up for the desired project  you can grab all branches and tags for the existing remote using git fetch       Fetch does not make any changes to local branches  so you will need to merge a remote branch with a paired local branch to incorporate newly fetch changes  from github

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It is important to contrast the design philosophy of git with the philosophy of a more traditional source control tool like SVN   Subversion was designed and built with a client server model  There is a single repository that is the server  and several clients can fetch code from the server  work on it  then commit it back to the server  The assumption is that the client can always contact the server when it needs to perform an operation   Git was designed to support a more distributed model with no need for a central repository  though you can certainly use one if you like   Also git was designed so that the client and the  server  don t need to be online at the same time  Git was designed so that people on an unreliable link could exchange code via email  even  It is possible to work completely disconnected and burn a CD to exchange code via git   In order to support this model git maintains a local repository with your code and also an additional local repository that mirrors the state of the remote repository  By keeping a copy of the remote repository locally  git can figure out the changes needed even when the remote repository is not reachable   Later when you need to send the changes to someone else  git can transfer them as a set of changes from a point in time known to the remote repository    git fetch is the command that says  bring my local copy of the remote repository up to date    git pull says  bring the changes in the remote repository to where I keep my own code     Normally git pull does this by doing a git fetch to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then merging the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy   The take away is to keep in mind that there are often at least three copies of a project on your workstation  One copy is your own repository with your own commit history  The second copy is your working copy where you are editing and building  The third copy is your local  cached  copy of a remote repository

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Here is Oliver Steele s image of how all it all fits together     If there is sufficient interest  I suppose I could update the image to add git clone and git merge

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git pull   git fetch   git merge

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git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch SYNOPSIS  git pull       DESCRIPTION  Runs git-fetch with the given parameters  and calls git-merge to merge the  retrieved head s  into the current branch  With --rebase  calls git-rebase  instead of git-merge   Note that you can use    current directory  as the  lt repository  to pull  from the local repository     this is useful when merging local branches  into the current branch   Also note that options meant for git-pull itself and underlying git-merge  must be given before the options meant for git-fetch    You would pull if you want the histories merged  you d fetch if you just  want the codez  as some person has been tagging some articles around here

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Briefly git fetch is similar to pull but doesn t merge  i e  it fetches remote updates  refs and objects  but your local stays the same  i e  origin master gets updated but master stays the same    git pull pulls down from a remote and instantly merges  More git clone clones a repo  git rebase saves stuff from your current branch that isn t in the upstream branch to a temporary area  Your branch is now the same as before you started your changes  So  git pull -rebase will pull down the remote changes  rewind your local branch  replay your changes over the top of your current branch one by one until you re up-to-date  Also  git branch -a will show you exactly what   s going on with all your branches - local and remote  This blog post was useful  The difference between git pull  git fetch and git clone  and git rebase  - Mike Pearce and covers git pull  git fetch  git clone and git rebase  UPDATE I thought I d update this to show how you d actually use this in practice   Update your local repo from the remote  but don t merge    git fetch    After downloading the updates  let s see the differences   git diff master origin master    If you re happy with those updates  then merge   git pull    Notes  On step 2  For more on diffs between local and remotes  see  How to compare a local git branch with its remote branch  On step 3  It s probably more accurate  e g  on a fast changing repo  to do a git rebase origin here  See  Justin Ohms comment in another answer  See also  http   longair net blog 2009 04 16 git-fetch-and-merge

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Simple explanation   git fetch   fetches the metadata  If you want to check out a recently created branch you may want to do a fetch before checkout   git pull   Fetches the metadata from remote and also moved the files from remote and merge on to the branch

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git pull   It performs two functions using a single command   It fetches all the changes that were made to the remote branch and then merges those changes into your local branch  You can also modify the behaviour of pull by passing --rebase  The difference between merge and rebase can be read here  git fetch  Git fetch does only half the work of git pull  It just brings the remote changes into your local repo but does not apply them onto your branches You have to explicitly apply those changes  This can be done as follows   git fetch git rebase origin master

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A simple Graphical Representation for Beginners     here   git pull     will fetch code from repository and rebase with your local    in git pull there is possibility of new commits getting created   but in     git fetch   will fetch code from repository and we need to rebase it manually by using git rebase  eg  i am going to fetch from server master and rebase it in my local master   1  git pull   rebase will done automatically    git pull origin master   here origin is your remote repo master is your branch  2  git fetch  need to rebase manually    git fetch origin master   it will fetch server changes from origin  and it will be in your local until you rebase it on your own  we need to fix conflicts manually by checking codes   git rebase origin master   this will rebase code into local  before that ensure you re in right branch

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In the simplest terms  git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge  You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs remotes  lt remote gt    This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs heads  and is safe to do without changing your working copy  I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background  although I wouldn t recommend doing this   A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version  while also updating your other remote-tracking branches  From the Git documentation for git pull   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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One must keep in mind the nature of git  You have remotes and your local branches   not necessarily the same     In comparison to other source control systems this can be a bit perplexing    Usually when you checkout a remote a local copy is created that tracks the remote    git fetch will work with the remote branch and update your information    It is actually the case if other SWEs are working one the same branch  and rarely the case in small one dev - one branch - one project scenarios   Your work on the local branch is still intact  In order to bring the changes to your local branch you have to merge rebase the changes from the remote branch   git pull does exactly these two steps   i e  --rebase to rebase instead of merge    If your local history and the remote history have conflicts the you will be forced to do the merge during a git push to publish your changes   Thus it really depends on the nature of your work environment and experience what to use

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In the simplest terms  git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge  You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs remotes  lt remote gt    This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs heads  and is safe to do without changing your working copy  I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background  although I wouldn t recommend doing this   A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version  while also updating your other remote-tracking branches  From the Git documentation for git pull   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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The short and easy answer is that git pull is simply git fetch followed by git merge   It is very important to note that git pull will automatically merge whether you like it or not  This could  of course  result in merge conflicts  Let s say your remote is origin and your branch is master  If you git diff origin master before pulling  you should have some idea of potential merge conflicts and could prepare your local branch accordingly    In addition to pulling and pushing  some workflows involve git rebase  such as this one  which I paraphrase from the linked article   git pull origin master git checkout foo-branch git rebase master git push origin foo-branch   If you find yourself in such a situation  you may be tempted to git pull --rebase  Unless you really  really know what you are doing  I would advise against that  This warning is from the man page for git-pull  version 2 3 5      This is a potentially dangerous mode of operation  It rewrites   history  which does not bode well when you published that history   already  Do not use this option unless you have read git-rebase 1    carefully

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Trying to be clear and simple   The git pull command is actually a shortcut for git fetch followed by the git merge or the git rebase command depending on your configuration  You can configure your Git repository so that git pull is a fetch followed by a rebase

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git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch SYNOPSIS  git pull       DESCRIPTION  Runs git-fetch with the given parameters  and calls git-merge to merge the  retrieved head s  into the current branch  With --rebase  calls git-rebase  instead of git-merge   Note that you can use    current directory  as the  lt repository  to pull  from the local repository     this is useful when merging local branches  into the current branch   Also note that options meant for git-pull itself and underlying git-merge  must be given before the options meant for git-fetch    You would pull if you want the histories merged  you d fetch if you just  want the codez  as some person has been tagging some articles around here

User · Answer

In the simplest terms  git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge  You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs remotes  lt remote gt    This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs heads  and is safe to do without changing your working copy  I have even heard of people running git fetch periodically in a cron job in the background  although I wouldn t recommend doing this   A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version  while also updating your other remote-tracking branches  From the Git documentation for git pull   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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This graphic could be of help  git pull is essentially equivalent to git fetch then git merge

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OK  here is some information about git pull and git fetch  so you can understand the actual differences    in few simple words  fetch gets the latest data  but not the code changes and not going to mess with your current  local branch code  but pull get the code changes and merge it your local branch  read on to get more details about each  git fetch It will download all refs and objects and any new branches to your local Repository     Fetch branches and or tags  collectively   quot refs quot   from one or more other repositories  along with the objects necessary to complete their histories  Remote-tracking branches are updated  see the description of  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  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  is given and there is a remotes  entry in the configuration file   See git-config1   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    git pull It will apply the changes from remote to the current branch in local     Incorporates changes from a remote repository into the current branch  In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD  More precisely  git pull runs git fetch with the given parameters and calls git merge to merge the retrieved branch heads into the current branch  With --rebase  it runs git rebase instead of git merge   should be the name of a remote repository as passed to git-fetch1   can name an arbitrary remote ref  for example  the name of a tag  or even a collection of refs with corresponding remote-tracking branches  e g   refs heads  refs remotes origin    but usually it is the name of a branch in the remote repository  Default values for  and  are read from the  quot remote quot  and  quot merge quot  configuration for the current branch as set by git-branch --track    I also create the visual below to show you how git fetch and git pull working together

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git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch SYNOPSIS  git pull       DESCRIPTION  Runs git-fetch with the given parameters  and calls git-merge to merge the  retrieved head s  into the current branch  With --rebase  calls git-rebase  instead of git-merge   Note that you can use    current directory  as the  lt repository  to pull  from the local repository     this is useful when merging local branches  into the current branch   Also note that options meant for git-pull itself and underlying git-merge  must be given before the options meant for git-fetch    You would pull if you want the histories merged  you d fetch if you just  want the codez  as some person has been tagging some articles around here

User · Answer

Actually Git maintains a copy of your own code and  the remote repository   The command git fetch makes your local copy up to date by getting data from remote repository  The reason we need this is because somebody else might have made some changes to the code and you want to keep yourself updated     The command git pull brings the changes in the remote repository to where you keep your own code  Normally  git pull does this by doing a    git fetch    first to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then it merges the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy

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git fetch pulls down the code from the remote server to your tracking branches in your local repository   If your remote is named origin  the default  then these branches will be within origin   for example origin master  origin mybranch-123  etc   These are not your current branches  they are local copies of those branches from the server   git pull does a git fetch but then also merges the code from the tracking branch into your current local version of that branch   If you re not ready for that changes yet  just git fetch first

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All branches are stored in  git refs  All local branches are stored in  git refs heads  All remote branches are stored in  git refs remotes     The git fetch command downloads commits  files  and refs from a   remote repository into your local repo  Fetching is what you do when   you want to see what everybody else has been working on    So when you do git fetch all the files  commits  and  refs are downloaded in   this directory  git refs remotes  You can switch to these branches to see the changes   Also  you can merge them if you want      git pull  just downloads these changes and also merges them to the   current branch    Example  If you want see the work of remote branch dev jd feature auth  you just need to do   git fetch origin dev jd feature auth  to see the changes or work progress do    git checkout dev jd feature auth  But  If you also want to fetch and merge them in the current branch do   git pull origin dev jd feature auth  If you do git fetch origin branch name  it will fetch the branch  now you can switch to this branch you want and see the changes  Your local master or other local branches won t be affected  But git pull origin branch name will fetch the branch and will also merge to the current branch

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We simply say   git pull    git fetch   git merge   If you run git pull  you do not need to merge the data to local  If you run git fetch  it means you must run git merge for getting the latest code to your local machine  Otherwise  the local machine code would not be changed without merge    So in the Git Gui  when you do fetch  you have to merge the data  Fetch itself won t make the code changes at your local  You can check that when you update the code by fetching once fetch and see  the code it won t change  Then you merge    You will see the changed code

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Bonus  In speaking of pull  amp  fetch in the above answers  I would like to share an interesting trick  git pull --rebase This above command is the most useful command in my git life which saved a lots of time  Before pushing your new commits to server  try this command and it will automatically sync latest server changes  with a fetch   merge  and will place your commit at the top in git log  No need to worry about manual pull merge  Find details at  http   gitolite com git-pull--rebase

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When you use pull  Git tries to automatically do your work for you  It is context sensitive  so Git will merge any pulled commits into the branch you are currently working in   pull automatically merges the commits without letting you review them first  If you don   t closely manage your branches  you may run into frequent conflicts  When you fetch  Git gathers any commits from the target branch that do not exist in your current branch and stores them in your local repository  However  it does not merge them with your current branch  This is particularly useful if you need to keep your repository up to date  but are working on something that might break if you update your files   To integrate the commits into your master branch  you use merge

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I like to have some visual representation of the situation to grasp these things  Maybe other developers would like to see it too  so here s my addition  I m not totally sure that it all is correct  so please comment if you find any mistakes                                            LOCAL SYSTEM                                                                                                                                                         REMOTE REPOSITORY   REMOTE REPOSITORY  LOCAL REPOSITORY     WORKING COPY  ORIGIN              CACHED             for example         mirror of the       a github repo       remote repo Can also be         multiple repo s                                             FETCH   ------------------ gt   Your local cache of the remote is updated with the origin  or multiple external sources  that is git s distributed nature                      PULL    -------------------------------------------------------- gt   changes are merged directly into your local copy  when conflicts occur   you are asked for decisions                      COMMIT                                            lt ---------------  When coming from  for example  subversion  you might think that a commit will update the origin  In git  a commit is only done to your local repo                      PUSH     lt ---------------------------------------  Synchronizes your changes back into the origin    Some major advantages for having a fetched mirror of the remote are    Performance  scroll through all commits and messages without trying to squeeze it through the network  Feedback about the state of your local repo  for example  I use Atlassian s SourceTree  which will give me a bulb indicating if I m commits ahead or behind compared to the origin  This information can be updated with a GIT FETCH

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Bonus  In speaking of pull  amp  fetch in the above answers  I would like to share an interesting trick  git pull --rebase This above command is the most useful command in my git life which saved a lots of time  Before pushing your new commits to server  try this command and it will automatically sync latest server changes  with a fetch   merge  and will place your commit at the top in git log  No need to worry about manual pull merge  Find details at  http   gitolite com git-pull--rebase

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The Difference between GIT Fetch and GIT Pull can be explained with the following scenario   Keeping in mind that pictures speak louder than words   I have provided pictorial representation  Let s take an example that you are working on a project with your team members  So there will be one main Branch of the project and all the contributors must fork it to their own local repository and then work on this local branch to modify Add modules then push back to the main branch  So  Initial State of the two Branches when you forked the main project on your local repository will be like this-  A  B and C are Modules already completed of the project   Now  you have started working on the new module  suppose D   and when you have completed the D module you want to push it to the main branch  But meanwhile what happens is that one of your teammates has developed new Module E  F and modified C  So now what has happened is that your local repository is lacking behind the original progress of the project and thus pushing of your changes to the main branch can lead to conflict and may cause your Module D to malfunction   To avoid such issues and to work parallel with the original progress of the project there are Two ways  1  Git Fetch- This will Download all the changes that have been made to the origin main branch project which are not present in your local branch  And will wait for the Git Merge command to apply the changes that have been fetched to your Repository or branch   So now You can carefully monitor the files before merging it to your repository  And you can also modify D if required because of Modified C   2  Git Pull- This will update your local branch with the origin main branch i e  actually what it does is a combination of Git Fetch and Git merge one after another  But this may Cause Conflicts to occur  so it   s recommended to use Git Pull with a clean copy

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git pull   git fetch   git merge

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What is the difference between git pull and git fetch    To understand this  you first need to understand that your local git maintains not only your local repository  but it also maintains a local copy of the remote repository   git fetch brings your local copy of the remote repository up to date  For example  if your remote repository is GitHub - you may want to fetch any changes made in the remote repository to your local copy of it the remote repository  This will allow you to perform operations such as compare or merge   git pull on the other hand will bring down the changes in the remote repository to where you keep your own code  Typically  git pull will do a git fetch first to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then it will merge the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy

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This interactive graphical representation is very helpful in understanging git  http   ndpsoftware com git-cheatsheet html   git fetch just  downloads  the changes from the remote to your local repository  git pull downloads the changes and merges them into your current branch   In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD

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In simple terms  if you were about to hop onto a plane without any Internet connection   before departing you could just do git fetch origin  lt branch gt   It would fetch all the changes into your computer  but keep it separate from your local development workspace  On the plane  you could make changes to your local workspace and then merge it with what you ve fetched and resolve potential merge conflicts all without a connection to the Internet  And unless someone had made new changes to the remote repository then once you arrive at the destination you would do git push origin  lt branch gt  and go get your coffee   From this awesome Atlassian tutorial   The git fetch command downloads commits  files  and refs from a remote repository into your local repository  Fetching is what you do when you want to see what everybody else has been working on  It   s similar to SVN update in that it lets you see how the central history has progressed  but it doesn   t force you to actually merge the changes into your repository  Git isolates fetched content as a from existing local content  it has absolutely no effect on your local development work  Fetched content has to be explicitly checked out using the git checkout command  This makes fetching a safe way to review commits before integrating them with your local repository  When downloading content from a remote repository  git pull and git fetch commands are available to accomplish the task  You can consider git fetch the  safe  version of the two commands  It will download the remote content  but not update your local repository s working state  leaving your current work intact  git pull is the more aggressive alternative  it will download the remote content for the active local branch and immediately execute git merge to create a merge commit for the new remote content  If you have pending changes in progress this will cause conflicts and kickoff the merge conflict resolution flow    With git pull   You don t get any isolation  It doesn t need to be explicitly checked out  Because it implicitly does a git merge  The merging step will affect your local development and may cause conflicts It s basically NOT safe  It s aggressive  Unlike git fetch where it only affects your  git refs remotes  git pull will affect both your  git refs remotes and  git refs heads    Hmmm   so if I m not updating the working copy with git fetch  then where am I making changes  Where does Git fetch store the new commits  Great question  First and foremost  the heads or remotes don t store the new commits  They just have pointers to commits  So with git fetch you download the latest git objects  blob  tree  commits  to fully understand the objects watch this video on git internals  but only update your pointer remotes pointer to point to the latest commit of that branch   It s still isolated from your working copy  because your branch s pointer in the heads directory hasn t updated  It will only update upon a merge pull  But again where  Let s find out  In your project directory  i e   where you do your git commands  do   ls  This will show the files  amp  directories  Nothing cool  I know   Now do ls -a  This will show dot files  i e   files beginning with   You will then be able to see a directory named   git   Do cd  git  This will obviously change your directory   Now comes the fun part  do ls  You will see a list of directories  We re looking for refs  Do cd refs   It s interesting to see what s inside all directories  but let s focus on two of them  heads and remotes  Use cd to check inside them too   Any git fetch that you do will update the pointer in the   git refs remotes directory  It won t update anything in the   git refs heads directory   Any git pull will first do the git fetch  update items in the   git refs remotes directory  then merge with your local and then change the head inside the   git refs heads directory     A very good related answer can also be found in Where does  git fetch  place itself   Also  look for  quot Slash notation quot  from the Git branch naming conventions post  It helps you better understand how Git places things in different directories   To see the actual difference Just do  git fetch origin master git checkout master  If the remote master was updated you ll get a message like this  Your branch is behind  origin master  by 2 commits  and can be fast-forwarded     use  quot git pull quot  to update your local branch   If you didn t fetch and just did git checkout master then your local git wouldn t know that there are 2 commits added  And it would just say  Already on  master  Your branch is up to date with  origin master    But that s outdated and incorrect  It s because git will give you feedback solely based on what it knows  It s oblivious to new commits that it hasn t pulled down yet     Is there any way to see the new changes made in remote while working on the branch locally  Some IDEs  e g  Xcode  are super smart and use the result of a git fetch and can annotate the lines of code that have been changed in remote branch of your current working branch  If that line has been changed by both local changes and remote branch  then that line gets annotated with red  This isn t a merge conflict  It s a potential merge conflict  It s a headsup that you can use to resolve the future merge conflict before doing git pull from the remote branch    Fun tip  If you fetched a remote branch e g  did  git fetch origin feature 123  Then this would go into your remotes directory  It s still not available to your local directory  However  it simplifies your checkout to that remote branch by DWIM  Do what I mean   git checkout feature 123  you no longer need to do  git checkout -b feature 123 origin feature 123  For more on that read here

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It cost me a little bit to understand what was the difference  but this is a simple explanation  master in your localhost is a branch   When you clone a repository you fetch the entire repository to you local host  This means that at that time you have an origin master pointer to HEAD and master pointing to the same HEAD   when you start working and do commits you advance the master pointer to HEAD   your commits  But the origin master pointer is still pointing to what it was when you cloned   So the difference will be    If you do a git fetch it will just fetch all the changes in the remote repository  GitHub  and move the origin master pointer to HEAD  Meanwhile your local branch master will keep pointing to where it has  If you do a git pull  it will do basically fetch  as explained previously  and merge any new changes to your master branch and move the pointer to HEAD

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I have struggled with this as well   In fact I got here with a google search of exactly the same question   Reading all these answers finally painted a picture in my head and I decided to try to get this down looking at the state of the 2 repositories and 1 sandbox and actions performed over time while watching the version of them   So here is what I came up with   Please correct me if I messed up anywhere   The three repos with a fetch   ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Remote Repo       -     - Remote Repo         -     - Remote Repo         - -                   -     - gets pushed         -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R02               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Repo        -     - Local Repo          -     - Local Repo          - - pull              -     -                     -     - fetch               - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Sandbox     -     - Local Sandbox       -     - Local Sandbox       - - Checkout          -     - new work done       -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -  R01                - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------   The three repos with a pull  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Remote Repo       -     - Remote Repo         -     - Remote Repo         - -                   -     - gets pushed         -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R02               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Repo        -     - Local Repo          -     - Local Repo          - - pull              -     -                     -     - pull                - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Sandbox     -     - Local Sandbox       -     - Local Sandbox       - - Checkout          -     - new work done       -     - merged with R02     - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -  R02                - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------   This helped me understand why a fetch is pretty important

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When you use pull  Git tries to automatically do your work for you  It is context sensitive  so Git will merge any pulled commits into the branch you are currently working in   pull automatically merges the commits without letting you review them first  If you don   t closely manage your branches  you may run into frequent conflicts  When you fetch  Git gathers any commits from the target branch that do not exist in your current branch and stores them in your local repository  However  it does not merge them with your current branch  This is particularly useful if you need to keep your repository up to date  but are working on something that might break if you update your files   To integrate the commits into your master branch  you use merge

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Git allows chronologically older commits to be applied after newer commits  Because of this  the act of transferring commits between repositories is split into two steps    Copying new commits from remote branch to copy of this remote branch inside local repo      repo to repo operation  master remote  gt  gt  remote origin master local Integrating new commits to local branch   inside-repo operation  remote origin master local  gt  gt  master local   There are two ways of doing step 2  You can    Fork local branch after last common ancestor and add new commits parallel to commits which are unique to local repository  finalized by merging commit  closing the fork   Insert new commits after last common ancestor and reapply commits unique to local repository    In git terminology  step 1 is git fetch  step 2 is git merge or git rebase  git pull is git fetch and git merge

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git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch SYNOPSIS  git pull       DESCRIPTION  Runs git-fetch with the given parameters  and calls git-merge to merge the  retrieved head s  into the current branch  With --rebase  calls git-rebase  instead of git-merge   Note that you can use    current directory  as the  lt repository  to pull  from the local repository     this is useful when merging local branches  into the current branch   Also note that options meant for git-pull itself and underlying git-merge  must be given before the options meant for git-fetch    You would pull if you want the histories merged  you d fetch if you just  want the codez  as some person has been tagging some articles around here

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A simple Graphical Representation for Beginners     here   git pull     will fetch code from repository and rebase with your local    in git pull there is possibility of new commits getting created   but in     git fetch   will fetch code from repository and we need to rebase it manually by using git rebase  eg  i am going to fetch from server master and rebase it in my local master   1  git pull   rebase will done automatically    git pull origin master   here origin is your remote repo master is your branch  2  git fetch  need to rebase manually    git fetch origin master   it will fetch server changes from origin  and it will be in your local until you rebase it on your own  we need to fix conflicts manually by checking codes   git rebase origin master   this will rebase code into local  before that ensure you re in right branch

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Here is Oliver Steele s image of how all it all fits together     If there is sufficient interest  I suppose I could update the image to add git clone and git merge

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It is important to contrast the design philosophy of git with the philosophy of a more traditional source control tool like SVN   Subversion was designed and built with a client server model  There is a single repository that is the server  and several clients can fetch code from the server  work on it  then commit it back to the server  The assumption is that the client can always contact the server when it needs to perform an operation   Git was designed to support a more distributed model with no need for a central repository  though you can certainly use one if you like   Also git was designed so that the client and the  server  don t need to be online at the same time  Git was designed so that people on an unreliable link could exchange code via email  even  It is possible to work completely disconnected and burn a CD to exchange code via git   In order to support this model git maintains a local repository with your code and also an additional local repository that mirrors the state of the remote repository  By keeping a copy of the remote repository locally  git can figure out the changes needed even when the remote repository is not reachable   Later when you need to send the changes to someone else  git can transfer them as a set of changes from a point in time known to the remote repository    git fetch is the command that says  bring my local copy of the remote repository up to date    git pull says  bring the changes in the remote repository to where I keep my own code     Normally git pull does this by doing a git fetch to bring the local copy of the remote repository up to date  and then merging the changes into your own code repository and possibly your working copy   The take away is to keep in mind that there are often at least three copies of a project on your workstation  One copy is your own repository with your own commit history  The second copy is your working copy where you are editing and building  The third copy is your local  cached  copy of a remote repository

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Git allows chronologically older commits to be applied after newer commits  Because of this  the act of transferring commits between repositories is split into two steps    Copying new commits from remote branch to copy of this remote branch inside local repo      repo to repo operation  master remote  gt  gt  remote origin master local Integrating new commits to local branch   inside-repo operation  remote origin master local  gt  gt  master local   There are two ways of doing step 2  You can    Fork local branch after last common ancestor and add new commits parallel to commits which are unique to local repository  finalized by merging commit  closing the fork   Insert new commits after last common ancestor and reapply commits unique to local repository    In git terminology  step 1 is git fetch  step 2 is git merge or git rebase  git pull is git fetch and git merge

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Git Fetch  You download changes to your local branch from origin through fetch  Fetch asks the remote repo for all commits that others have made but you don t have on your local repo  Fetch downloads these commits and adds them to the local repository   Git Merge  You can apply changes downloaded through fetch using the merge command  Merge will take the commits retrieved from fetch and try to add them to your local branch  The merge will keep the commit history of your local changes so that when you share your branch with push  Git will know how others can merge your changes   Git Pull  Fetch and merge run together often enough that a command that combines the two  pull  was created  Pull does a fetch and then a merge to add the downloaded commits into your local branch

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git pull   It performs two functions using a single command   It fetches all the changes that were made to the remote branch and then merges those changes into your local branch  You can also modify the behaviour of pull by passing --rebase  The difference between merge and rebase can be read here  git fetch  Git fetch does only half the work of git pull  It just brings the remote changes into your local repo but does not apply them onto your branches You have to explicitly apply those changes  This can be done as follows   git fetch git rebase origin master

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Simple explanation   git fetch   fetches the metadata  If you want to check out a recently created branch you may want to do a fetch before checkout   git pull   Fetches the metadata from remote and also moved the files from remote and merge on to the branch

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OK  here is some information about git pull and git fetch  so you can understand the actual differences    in few simple words  fetch gets the latest data  but not the code changes and not going to mess with your current  local branch code  but pull get the code changes and merge it your local branch  read on to get more details about each  git fetch It will download all refs and objects and any new branches to your local Repository     Fetch branches and or tags  collectively   quot refs quot   from one or more other repositories  along with the objects necessary to complete their histories  Remote-tracking branches are updated  see the description of  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  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  is given and there is a remotes  entry in the configuration file   See git-config1   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    git pull It will apply the changes from remote to the current branch in local     Incorporates changes from a remote repository into the current branch  In its default mode  git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH HEAD  More precisely  git pull runs git fetch with the given parameters and calls git merge to merge the retrieved branch heads into the current branch  With --rebase  it runs git rebase instead of git merge   should be the name of a remote repository as passed to git-fetch1   can name an arbitrary remote ref  for example  the name of a tag  or even a collection of refs with corresponding remote-tracking branches  e g   refs heads  refs remotes origin    but usually it is the name of a branch in the remote repository  Default values for  and  are read from the  quot remote quot  and  quot merge quot  configuration for the current branch as set by git-branch --track    I also create the visual below to show you how git fetch and git pull working together

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The short and easy answer is that git pull is simply git fetch followed by git merge   It is very important to note that git pull will automatically merge whether you like it or not  This could  of course  result in merge conflicts  Let s say your remote is origin and your branch is master  If you git diff origin master before pulling  you should have some idea of potential merge conflicts and could prepare your local branch accordingly    In addition to pulling and pushing  some workflows involve git rebase  such as this one  which I paraphrase from the linked article   git pull origin master git checkout foo-branch git rebase master git push origin foo-branch   If you find yourself in such a situation  you may be tempted to git pull --rebase  Unless you really  really know what you are doing  I would advise against that  This warning is from the man page for git-pull  version 2 3 5      This is a potentially dangerous mode of operation  It rewrites   history  which does not bode well when you published that history   already  Do not use this option unless you have read git-rebase 1    carefully

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One must keep in mind the nature of git  You have remotes and your local branches   not necessarily the same     In comparison to other source control systems this can be a bit perplexing    Usually when you checkout a remote a local copy is created that tracks the remote    git fetch will work with the remote branch and update your information    It is actually the case if other SWEs are working one the same branch  and rarely the case in small one dev - one branch - one project scenarios   Your work on the local branch is still intact  In order to bring the changes to your local branch you have to merge rebase the changes from the remote branch   git pull does exactly these two steps   i e  --rebase to rebase instead of merge    If your local history and the remote history have conflicts the you will be forced to do the merge during a git push to publish your changes   Thus it really depends on the nature of your work environment and experience what to use

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Sometimes a visual representation helps

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You can fetch from a remote repository  see the differences and then pull or merge   This is an example for a remote repository called origin and a branch called master tracking the remote branch origin master   git checkout master                                                   git fetch                                         git diff origin master git rebase origin master

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Git obtains the branch of the latest version from the remote to the local using two commands     git fetch  Git is going to get the latest version from remote to local   but it do not automatically merge           git fetch origin master git log -p master  origin master git merge origin master           The commands above mean that download latest version of the main branch from origin from the remote to origin master branch  And then compares the local master branch and origin master branch  Finally  merge   git pull  Git is going to get the latest version from the remote and merge into the local          git pull origin master           The command above is the equivalent to git fetch and git merge  In practice  git fetch maybe more secure because before the merge we can see the changes and decide whether to merge

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git fetch will retrieve remote branches so that you can git diff or git merge them with the current branch  git pull will run fetch on the remote brach tracked by the current branch and then merge the result  You can use git fetch to see if there are any updates to the remote branch without necessary merging them with your local branch

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I have struggled with this as well   In fact I got here with a google search of exactly the same question   Reading all these answers finally painted a picture in my head and I decided to try to get this down looking at the state of the 2 repositories and 1 sandbox and actions performed over time while watching the version of them   So here is what I came up with   Please correct me if I messed up anywhere   The three repos with a fetch   ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Remote Repo       -     - Remote Repo         -     - Remote Repo         - -                   -     - gets pushed         -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R02               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Repo        -     - Local Repo          -     - Local Repo          - - pull              -     -                     -     - fetch               - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Sandbox     -     - Local Sandbox       -     - Local Sandbox       - - Checkout          -     - new work done       -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -  R01                - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------   The three repos with a pull  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Remote Repo       -     - Remote Repo         -     - Remote Repo         - -                   -     - gets pushed         -     -                     - -   R01             -     -   R02               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Repo        -     - Local Repo          -     - Local Repo          - - pull              -     -                     -     - pull                - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -   R02               - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------  ---------------------     -----------------------     ----------------------- - Local Sandbox     -     - Local Sandbox       -     - Local Sandbox       - - Checkout          -     - new work done       -     - merged with R02     - -   R01             -     -   R01               -     -  R02                - ---------------------     -----------------------     -----------------------   This helped me understand why a fetch is pretty important

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git fetch will retrieve remote branches so that you can git diff or git merge them with the current branch  git pull will run fetch on the remote brach tracked by the current branch and then merge the result  You can use git fetch to see if there are any updates to the remote branch without necessary merging them with your local branch

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git pull      git fetch   git merge    git fetch does not changes to local branches   If you already have a local repository with a remote set up for the desired project  you can grab all branches and tags for the existing remote using git fetch       Fetch does not make any changes to local branches  so you will need to merge a remote branch with a paired local branch to incorporate newly fetch changes  from github

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One use case of git fetch is that the following will tell you any changes in the remote branch since your last pull    so you can check before doing an actual pull  which could change files in your current branch and working copy   git fetch git diff    origin   See  https   git-scm com docs git-diff regarding double- and triple-dot syntax in the diff command

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In simple terms  if you were about to hop onto a plane without any Internet connection   before departing you could just do git fetch origin  lt branch gt   It would fetch all the changes into your computer  but keep it separate from your local development workspace  On the plane  you could make changes to your local workspace and then merge it with what you ve fetched and resolve potential merge conflicts all without a connection to the Internet  And unless someone had made new changes to the remote repository then once you arrive at the destination you would do git push origin  lt branch gt  and go get your coffee   From this awesome Atlassian tutorial   The git fetch command downloads commits  files  and refs from a remote repository into your local repository  Fetching is what you do when you want to see what everybody else has been working on  It   s similar to SVN update in that it lets you see how the central history has progressed  but it doesn   t force you to actually merge the changes into your repository  Git isolates fetched content as a from existing local content  it has absolutely no effect on your local development work  Fetched content has to be explicitly checked out using the git checkout command  This makes fetching a safe way to review commits before integrating them with your local repository  When downloading content from a remote repository  git pull and git fetch commands are available to accomplish the task  You can consider git fetch the  safe  version of the two commands  It will download the remote content  but not update your local repository s working state  leaving your current work intact  git pull is the more aggressive alternative  it will download the remote content for the active local branch and immediately execute git merge to create a merge commit for the new remote content  If you have pending changes in progress this will cause conflicts and kickoff the merge conflict resolution flow    With git pull   You don t get any isolation  It doesn t need to be explicitly checked out  Because it implicitly does a git merge  The merging step will affect your local development and may cause conflicts It s basically NOT safe  It s aggressive  Unlike git fetch where it only affects your  git refs remotes  git pull will affect both your  git refs remotes and  git refs heads    Hmmm   so if I m not updating the working copy with git fetch  then where am I making changes  Where does Git fetch store the new commits  Great question  First and foremost  the heads or remotes don t store the new commits  They just have pointers to commits  So with git fetch you download the latest git objects  blob  tree  commits  to fully understand the objects watch this video on git internals  but only update your pointer remotes pointer to point to the latest commit of that branch   It s still isolated from your working copy  because your branch s pointer in the heads directory hasn t updated  It will only update upon a merge pull  But again where  Let s find out  In your project directory  i e   where you do your git commands  do   ls  This will show the files  amp  directories  Nothing cool  I know   Now do ls -a  This will show dot files  i e   files beginning with   You will then be able to see a directory named   git   Do cd  git  This will obviously change your directory   Now comes the fun part  do ls  You will see a list of directories  We re looking for refs  Do cd refs   It s interesting to see what s inside all directories  but let s focus on two of them  heads and remotes  Use cd to check inside them too   Any git fetch that you do will update the pointer in the   git refs remotes directory  It won t update anything in the   git refs heads directory   Any git pull will first do the git fetch  update items in the   git refs remotes directory  then merge with your local and then change the head inside the   git refs heads directory     A very good related answer can also be found in Where does  git fetch  place itself   Also  look for  quot Slash notation quot  from the Git branch naming conventions post  It helps you better understand how Git places things in different directories   To see the actual difference Just do  git fetch origin master git checkout master  If the remote master was updated you ll get a message like this  Your branch is behind  origin master  by 2 commits  and can be fast-forwarded     use  quot git pull quot  to update your local branch   If you didn t fetch and just did git checkout master then your local git wouldn t know that there are 2 commits added  And it would just say  Already on  master  Your branch is up to date with  origin master    But that s outdated and incorrect  It s because git will give you feedback solely based on what it knows  It s oblivious to new commits that it hasn t pulled down yet     Is there any way to see the new changes made in remote while working on the branch locally  Some IDEs  e g  Xcode  are super smart and use the result of a git fetch and can annotate the lines of code that have been changed in remote branch of your current working branch  If that line has been changed by both local changes and remote branch  then that line gets annotated with red  This isn t a merge conflict  It s a potential merge conflict  It s a headsup that you can use to resolve the future merge conflict before doing git pull from the remote branch    Fun tip  If you fetched a remote branch e g  did  git fetch origin feature 123  Then this would go into your remotes directory  It s still not available to your local directory  However  it simplifies your checkout to that remote branch by DWIM  Do what I mean   git checkout feature 123  you no longer need to do  git checkout -b feature 123 origin feature 123  For more on that read here

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We simply say   git pull    git fetch   git merge   If you run git pull  you do not need to merge the data to local  If you run git fetch  it means you must run git merge for getting the latest code to your local machine  Otherwise  the local machine code would not be changed without merge    So in the Git Gui  when you do fetch  you have to merge the data  Fetch itself won t make the code changes at your local  You can check that when you update the code by fetching once fetch and see  the code it won t change  Then you merge    You will see the changed code

User · Answer

It cost me a little bit to understand what was the difference  but this is a simple explanation  master in your localhost is a branch   When you clone a repository you fetch the entire repository to you local host  This means that at that time you have an origin master pointer to HEAD and master pointing to the same HEAD   when you start working and do commits you advance the master pointer to HEAD   your commits  But the origin master pointer is still pointing to what it was when you cloned   So the difference will be    If you do a git fetch it will just fetch all the changes in the remote repository  GitHub  and move the origin master pointer to HEAD  Meanwhile your local branch master will keep pointing to where it has  If you do a git pull  it will do basically fetch  as explained previously  and merge any new changes to your master branch and move the pointer to HEAD

User · Answer

Sometimes a visual representation helps

[git] What is the difference between 'git pull' and 'git fetch'?

Examples related to git

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