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.

       By default, tags are auto-followed. This means that when fetching from a remote, any tags
       on the remote that point to objects that exist in the local repository are 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, by configuring
       remote.<name>.tagopt, or by using a refspec that fetches tags explicitly.

       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)).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       -k, --keep
           Keep downloaded pack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       -v, --verbose
           Be verbose.

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

       <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.

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

           •   A parameter <ref> without a colon fetches that ref into FETCH_HEAD, and updates
               the remote-tracking branches (if any).

GIT URLS

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

       Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp, and ftps can be used
       for fetching and rsync can be used for fetching and pushing, but these are inefficient and
       deprecated; do not use them).

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

       The following syntaxes may be used with them:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:

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

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

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

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

       •   /path/to/repo.git/

       •   file:///path/to/repo.git/

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

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

       •   <transport>::<address>

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

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

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

       For example, with this:

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

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

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

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

       For example, with this:

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

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

REMOTES

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

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

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

       •   a file in the $GIT_DIR/branches directory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                   <url>#<head>

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

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

       git fetch uses:

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

       git push uses:

                   HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

EXAMPLES

       •   Update the remote-tracking branches:

               $ git fetch origin

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

       •   Using refspecs explicitly:

               $ git fetch origin +pu:pu maint:tmp

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

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

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