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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | GIT URLS | REMOTES | CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES | PRUNING | OUTPUT | EXAMPLES | SECURITY | CONFIGURATION | BUGS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-FETCH(1) Git Manual GIT-FETCH(1)
git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository
git fetch [<options>] [<repository> [<refspec>...]]
git fetch [<options>] <group>
git fetch --multiple [<options>] [(<repository> | <group>)...]
git fetch --all [<options>]
Fetch branches and/or tags (collectively, "refs") from one or more
other repositories, along with the objects necessary to complete
their histories. Remote-tracking branches are updated (see the
description of <refspec> below for ways to control this behavior).
By default, any tag that points into the histories being fetched
is also fetched; the effect is to fetch tags that point at
branches that you are interested in. This default behavior can be
changed by using the --tags or --no-tags options or by configuring
remote.<name>.tagOpt. By using a refspec that fetches tags
explicitly, you can fetch tags that do not point into branches you
are interested in as well.
git fetch can fetch from either a single named repository or URL,
or from several repositories at once if <group> is given and there
is a remotes.<group> entry in the configuration file. (See
git-config(1)).
When no remote is specified, by default the origin remote will be
used, unless there’s an upstream branch configured for the current
branch.
The names of refs that are fetched, together with the object names
they point at, are written to .git/FETCH_HEAD. This information
may be used by scripts or other git commands, such as git-pull(1).
--[no-]all
Fetch all remotes, except for the ones that has the
remote.<name>.skipFetchAll configuration variable set. This
overrides the configuration variable fetch.all`.
-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.
--atomic
Use an atomic transaction to update local refs. Either all
refs are updated, or on error, no refs are updated.
--depth=<depth>
Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip
of each remote branch history. If fetching to a shallow
repository created by git clone with --depth=<depth> option
(see git-clone(1)), deepen or shorten the history to the
specified number of commits. Tags for the deepened commits are
not fetched.
--deepen=<depth>
Similar to --depth, except it specifies the number of commits
from the current shallow boundary instead of from the tip of
each remote branch history.
--shallow-since=<date>
Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to
include all reachable commits after <date>.
--shallow-exclude=<ref>
Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to
exclude commits reachable from a specified remote branch or
tag. This option can be specified multiple times.
--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 accepts such refs.
--negotiation-tip=<commit|glob>
By default, Git will report, to the server, commits reachable
from all local refs to find common commits in an attempt to
reduce the size of the to-be-received packfile. If specified,
Git will only report commits reachable from the given tips.
This is useful to speed up fetches when the user knows which
local ref is likely to have commits in common with the
upstream ref being fetched.
This option may be specified more than once; if so, Git will
report commits reachable from any of the given commits.
The argument to this option may be a glob on ref names, a ref,
or the (possibly abbreviated) SHA-1 of a commit. Specifying a
glob is equivalent to specifying this option multiple times,
one for each matching ref name.
See also the fetch.negotiationAlgorithm and push.negotiate
configuration variables documented in git-config(1), and the
--negotiate-only option below.
--negotiate-only
Do not fetch anything from the server, and instead print the
ancestors of the provided --negotiation-tip=* arguments, which
we have in common with the server.
This is incompatible with
--recurse-submodules=[yes|on-demand]. Internally this is used
to implement the push.negotiate option, see git-config(1).
--dry-run
Show what would be done, without making any changes.
--porcelain
Print the output to standard output in an easy-to-parse format
for scripts. See section OUTPUT in git-fetch(1) for details.
This is incompatible with --recurse-submodules=[yes|on-demand]
and takes precedence over the fetch.output config option.
--[no-]write-fetch-head
Write the list of remote refs fetched in the FETCH_HEAD file
directly under $GIT_DIR. This is the default. Passing
--no-write-fetch-head from the command line tells Git not to
write the file. Under --dry-run option, the file is never
written.
-f, --force
When git fetch is used with <src>:<dst> refspec, it may refuse
to update the local branch as discussed in the <refspec> part
below. 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.
--[no-]auto-maintenance, --[no-]auto-gc
Run git maintenance run --auto at the end to perform automatic
repository maintenance if needed. (--[no-]auto-gc is a
synonym.) This is enabled by default.
--[no-]write-commit-graph
Write a commit-graph after fetching. This overrides the config
setting fetch.writeCommitGraph.
--prefetch
Modify the configured refspec to place all refs into the
refs/prefetch/ namespace. See the prefetch task in
git-maintenance(1).
-p, --prune
Before fetching, remove any remote-tracking references that no
longer exist on the remote. Tags are not subject to pruning if
they are fetched only because of the default tag
auto-following or due to a --tags option. However, if tags are
fetched due to an explicit refspec (either on the command line
or in the remote configuration, for example if the remote was
cloned with the --mirror option), then they are also subject
to pruning. Supplying --prune-tags is a shorthand for
providing the tag refspec.
See the PRUNING section below for more details.
-P, --prune-tags
Before fetching, remove any local tags that no longer exist on
the remote if --prune is enabled. This option should be used
more carefully, unlike --prune it will remove any local
references (local tags) that have been created. This option is
a shorthand for providing the explicit tag refspec along with
--prune, see the discussion about that in its documentation.
See the PRUNING section below for more details.
-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).
--refetch
Instead of negotiating with the server to avoid transferring
commits and associated objects that are already present
locally, this option fetches all objects as a fresh clone
would. Use this to reapply a partial clone filter from
configuration or using --filter= when the filter definition
has changed. Automatic post-fetch maintenance will perform
object database pack consolidation to remove any duplicate
objects.
--refmap=<refspec>
When fetching refs listed on the command line, use the
specified refspec (can be given more than once) to map the
refs to remote-tracking branches, instead of the values of
remote.*.fetch configuration variables for the remote
repository. Providing an empty <refspec> to the --refmap
option causes Git to ignore the configured refspecs and rely
entirely on the refspecs supplied as command-line arguments.
See section on "Configured Remote-tracking Branches" for
details.
-t, --tags
Fetch all tags from the remote (i.e., fetch remote tags
refs/tags/* into local tags with the same name), in addition
to whatever else would otherwise be fetched. Using this option
alone does not subject tags to pruning, even if --prune is
used (though tags may be pruned anyway if they are also the
destination of an explicit refspec; see --prune).
--recurse-submodules[=(yes|on-demand|no)]
This option controls if and under what conditions new commits
of submodules should be fetched too. When recursing through
submodules, git fetch always attempts to fetch "changed"
submodules, that is, a submodule that has commits that are
referenced by a newly fetched superproject commit but are
missing in the local submodule clone. A changed submodule can
be fetched as long as it is present locally e.g. in
$GIT_DIR/modules/ (see gitsubmodules(7)); if the upstream adds
a new submodule, that submodule cannot be fetched until it is
cloned e.g. by git submodule update.
When set to on-demand, only changed submodules are fetched.
When set to yes, all populated submodules are fetched and
submodules that are both unpopulated and changed are fetched.
When set to no, submodules are never fetched.
When unspecified, this uses the value of
fetch.recurseSubmodules if it is set (see git-config(1)),
defaulting to on-demand if unset. When this option is used
without any value, it defaults to yes.
-j, --jobs=<n>
Number of parallel children to be used for all forms of
fetching.
If the --multiple option was specified, the different remotes
will be fetched in parallel. If multiple submodules are
fetched, they will be fetched in parallel. To control them
independently, use the config settings fetch.parallel and
submodule.fetchJobs (see git-config(1)).
Typically, parallel recursive and multi-remote fetches will be
faster. By default fetches are performed sequentially, not in
parallel.
--no-recurse-submodules
Disable recursive fetching of submodules (this has the same
effect as using the --recurse-submodules=no option).
--set-upstream
If the remote is fetched successfully, add upstream (tracking)
reference, used by argument-less git-pull(1) and other
commands. For more information, see branch.<name>.merge and
branch.<name>.remote in git-config(1).
--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.
-o <option>, --server-option=<option>
Transmit the given string to the server when communicating
using protocol version 2. The given string must not contain a
NUL or LF character. The server’s handling of server options,
including unknown ones, is server-specific. When multiple
--server-option=<option> are given, they are all sent to the
other side in the order listed on the command line. When no
--server-option=<option> is given from the command line, the
values of configuration variable remote.<name>.serverOption
are used instead.
--show-forced-updates
By default, git checks if a branch is force-updated during
fetch. This can be disabled through fetch.showForcedUpdates,
but the --show-forced-updates option guarantees this check
occurs. See git-config(1).
--no-show-forced-updates
By default, git checks if a branch is force-updated during
fetch. Pass --no-show-forced-updates or set
fetch.showForcedUpdates to false to skip this check for
performance reasons. If used during git-pull the --ff-only
option will still check for forced updates before attempting a
fast-forward update. See git-config(1).
-4, --ipv4
Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.
-6, --ipv6
Use IPv6 addresses only, ignoring IPv4 addresses.
<repository>
The "remote" repository that is the source of a fetch or pull
operation. This parameter can be either a URL (see the section
GIT URLS below) or the name of a remote (see the section
REMOTES below).
<group>
A name referring to a list of repositories as the value of
remotes.<group> in the configuration file. (See
git-config(1)).
<refspec>
Specifies which refs to fetch and which local refs to update.
When no <refspec>s appear on the command line, the refs to
fetch are read from remote.<repository>.fetch variables
instead (see CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES below).
The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +,
followed by the source <src>, followed by a colon :, followed
by the destination <dst>. The colon can be omitted when <dst>
is empty. <src> is typically a ref, or a glob pattern with a
single * that is used to match a set of refs, but it can also
be a fully spelled hex object name.
A <refspec> may contain a * in its <src> to indicate a simple
pattern match. Such a refspec functions like a glob that
matches any ref with the pattern. A pattern <refspec> must
have one and only one * in both the <src> and <dst>. It will
map refs to the destination by replacing the * with the
contents matched from the source.
If a refspec is prefixed by ^, it will be interpreted as a
negative refspec. Rather than specifying which refs to fetch
or which local refs to update, such a refspec will instead
specify refs to exclude. A ref will be considered to match if
it matches at least one positive refspec, and does not match
any negative refspec. Negative refspecs can be useful to
restrict the scope of a pattern refspec so that it will not
include specific refs. Negative refspecs can themselves be
pattern refspecs. However, they may only contain a <src> and
do not specify a <dst>. Fully spelled out hex object names are
also not supported.
tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>;
it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.
The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched, and if <dst> is
not an empty string, an attempt is made to update the local
ref that matches it.
Whether that update is allowed without --force depends on the
ref namespace it’s being fetched to, the type of object being
fetched, and whether the update is considered to be a
fast-forward. Generally, the same rules apply for fetching as
when pushing, see the <refspec>... section of git-push(1) for
what those are. Exceptions to those rules particular to git
fetch are noted below.
Until Git version 2.20, and unlike when pushing with
git-push(1), any updates to refs/tags/* would be accepted
without + in the refspec (or --force). When fetching, we
promiscuously considered all tag updates from a remote to be
forced fetches. Since Git version 2.20, fetching to update
refs/tags/* works the same way as when pushing. I.e. any
updates will be rejected without + in the refspec (or
--force).
Unlike when pushing with git-push(1), any updates outside of
refs/{tags,heads}/* will be accepted without + in the refspec
(or --force), whether that’s swapping e.g. a tree object for a
blob, or a commit for another commit that doesn’t have the
previous commit as an ancestor etc.
Unlike when pushing with git-push(1), there is no
configuration which’ll amend these rules, and nothing like a
pre-fetch hook analogous to the pre-receive hook.
As with pushing with git-push(1), all of the rules described
above about what’s not allowed as an update can be overridden
by adding an optional leading + to a refspec (or using the
--force command line option). The only exception to this is
that no amount of forcing will make the refs/heads/* namespace
accept a non-commit object.
Note
When the remote branch you want to fetch is known to be
rewound and rebased regularly, it is expected that its new
tip will not be a descendant of its previous tip (as
stored in your remote-tracking branch the last time you
fetched). You would want to use the + sign to indicate
non-fast-forward updates will be needed for such branches.
There is no way to determine or declare that a branch will
be made available in a repository with this behavior; the
pulling user simply must know this is the expected usage
pattern for a branch.
--stdin
Read refspecs, one per line, from stdin in addition to those
provided as arguments. The "tag <name>" format is not
supported.
In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol,
the address of the remote server, and the path to the repository.
Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may
be absent.
Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp
and ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and
deprecated; do not use 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>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• git://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• http[s]://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• ftp[s]://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh
protocol:
• [<user>@]<host>:/<path-to-git-repo>
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>[:<port>]/~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
• git://<host>[:<port>]/~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
• [<user>@]<host>:~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
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.
git clone, git fetch and git pull, but not git push, will also
accept a suitable bundle file. See git-bundle(1).
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(7) 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.
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>. Pushing to a remote affects all defined pushurls or all
defined urls if no pushurls are defined. Fetch, however, will only
fetch from the first defined url if multiple urls are defined.
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 formats
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>
You often interact with the same remote repository by regularly
and repeatedly fetching from it. In order to keep track of the
progress of such a remote repository, git fetch allows you to
configure remote.<repository>.fetch configuration variables.
Typically such a variable may look like this:
[remote "origin"]
fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
This configuration is used in two ways:
• When git fetch is run without specifying what branches and/or
tags to fetch on the command line, e.g. git fetch origin or
git fetch, remote.<repository>.fetch values are used as the
refspecs—they specify which refs to fetch and which local refs
to update. The example above will fetch all branches that
exist in the origin (i.e. any ref that matches the left-hand
side of the value, refs/heads/*) and update the corresponding
remote-tracking branches in the refs/remotes/origin/*
hierarchy.
• When git fetch is run with explicit branches and/or tags to
fetch on the command line, e.g. git fetch origin master, the
<refspec>s given on the command line determine what are to be
fetched (e.g. master in the example, which is a short-hand
for master:, which in turn means "fetch the master branch but
I do not explicitly say what remote-tracking branch to update
with it from the command line"), and the example command will
fetch only the master branch. The remote.<repository>.fetch
values determine which remote-tracking branch, if any, is
updated. When used in this way, the remote.<repository>.fetch
values do not have any effect in deciding what gets fetched
(i.e. the values are not used as refspecs when the
command-line lists refspecs); they are only used to decide
where the refs that are fetched are stored by acting as a
mapping.
The latter use of the remote.<repository>.fetch values can be
overridden by giving the --refmap=<refspec> parameter(s) on the
command line.
Git has a default disposition of keeping data unless it’s
explicitly thrown away; this extends to holding onto local
references to branches on remotes that have themselves deleted
those branches.
If left to accumulate, these stale references might make
performance worse on big and busy repos that have a lot of branch
churn, and e.g. make the output of commands like git branch -a
--contains <commit> needlessly verbose, as well as impacting
anything else that’ll work with the complete set of known
references.
These remote-tracking references can be deleted as a one-off with
either of:
# While fetching
$ git fetch --prune <name>
# Only prune, don't fetch
$ git remote prune <name>
To prune references as part of your normal workflow without
needing to remember to run that, set fetch.prune globally, or
remote.<name>.prune per-remote in the config. See git-config(1).
Here’s where things get tricky and more specific. The pruning
feature doesn’t actually care about branches, instead it’ll prune
local ←→ remote-references as a function of the refspec of the
remote (see <refspec> and CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES
above).
Therefore if the refspec for the remote includes e.g.
refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*, or you manually run e.g. git fetch
--prune <name> "refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*" it won’t be stale remote
tracking branches that are deleted, but any local tag that doesn’t
exist on the remote.
This might not be what you expect, i.e. you want to prune remote
<name>, but also explicitly fetch tags from it, so when you fetch
from it you delete all your local tags, most of which may not have
come from the <name> remote in the first place.
So be careful when using this with a refspec like
refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*, or any other refspec which might map
references from multiple remotes to the same local namespace.
Since keeping up-to-date with both branches and tags on the remote
is a common use-case the --prune-tags option can be supplied along
with --prune to prune local tags that don’t exist on the remote,
and force-update those tags that differ. Tag pruning can also be
enabled with fetch.pruneTags or remote.<name>.pruneTags in the
config. See git-config(1).
The --prune-tags option is equivalent to having
refs/tags/*:refs/tags/* declared in the refspecs of the remote.
This can lead to some seemingly strange interactions:
# These both fetch tags
$ git fetch --no-tags origin 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'
$ git fetch --no-tags --prune-tags origin
The reason it doesn’t error out when provided without --prune or
its config versions is for flexibility of the configured versions,
and to maintain a 1=1 mapping between what the command line flags
do, and what the configuration versions do.
It’s reasonable to e.g. configure fetch.pruneTags=true in
~/.gitconfig to have tags pruned whenever git fetch --prune is
run, without making every invocation of git fetch without --prune
an error.
Pruning tags with --prune-tags also works when fetching a URL
instead of a named remote. These will all prune tags not found on
origin:
$ git fetch origin --prune --prune-tags
$ git fetch origin --prune 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'
$ git fetch <url-of-origin> --prune --prune-tags
$ git fetch <url-of-origin> --prune 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'
The output of "git fetch" depends on the transport method used;
this section describes the output when fetching over the Git
protocol (either locally or via ssh) and Smart HTTP protocol.
The status of the fetch is output in tabular form, with each line
representing the status of a single ref. Each line is of the form:
<flag> <summary> <from> -> <to> [<reason>]
When using --porcelain, the output format is intended to be
machine-parseable. In contrast to the human-readable output
formats it thus prints to standard output instead of standard
error. Each line is of the form:
<flag> <old-object-id> <new-object-id> <local-reference>
The status of up-to-date refs is shown only if the --verbose
option is used.
In compact output mode, specified with configuration variable
fetch.output, if either entire <from> or <to> is found in the
other string, it will be substituted with * in the other string.
For example, master -> origin/master becomes master -> origin/*.
flag
A single character indicating the status of the ref:
(space)
for a successfully fetched fast-forward;
+
for a successful forced update;
-
for a successfully pruned ref;
t
for a successful tag update;
*
for a successfully fetched new ref;
!
for a ref that was rejected or failed to update; and
=
for a ref that was up to date and did not need fetching.
summary
For a successfully fetched ref, the summary shows the old and
new values of the ref in a form suitable for using as an
argument to git log (this is <old>..<new> in most cases, and
<old>...<new> for forced non-fast-forward updates).
from
The name of the remote ref being fetched from, minus its
refs/<type>/ prefix. In the case of deletion, the name of the
remote ref is "(none)".
to
The name of the local ref being updated, minus its
refs/<type>/ prefix.
reason
A human-readable explanation. In the case of successfully
fetched refs, no explanation is needed. For a failed ref, the
reason for failure is described.
• 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
remote.<repository>.fetch option is used to specify a
non-default refspec.
• Using refspecs explicitly:
$ git fetch origin +seen:seen maint:tmp
This updates (or creates, as necessary) branches seen and tmp
in the local repository by fetching from the branches
(respectively) seen and maint from the remote repository.
The seen branch will be updated even if it does not
fast-forward, because it is prefixed with a plus sign; tmp
will not be.
• Peek at a remote’s branch, without configuring the remote in
your local repository:
$ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git maint
$ git log FETCH_HEAD
The first command fetches the maint branch from the repository
at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git and the second
command uses FETCH_HEAD to examine the branch with git-log(1).
The fetched objects will eventually be removed by git’s
built-in housekeeping (see git-gc(1)).
The fetch and push protocols are not designed to prevent one side
from stealing data from the other repository that was not intended
to be shared. If you have private data that you need to protect
from a malicious peer, your best option is to store it in another
repository. This applies to both clients and servers. In
particular, namespaces on a server are not effective for read
access control; you should only grant read access to a namespace
to clients that you would trust with read access to the entire
repository.
The known attack vectors are as follows:
1. The victim sends "have" lines advertising the IDs of objects
it has that are not explicitly intended to be shared but can
be used to optimize the transfer if the peer also has them.
The attacker chooses an object ID X to steal and sends a ref
to X, but isn’t required to send the content of X because the
victim already has it. Now the victim believes that the
attacker has X, and it sends the content of X back to the
attacker later. (This attack is most straightforward for a
client to perform on a server, by creating a ref to X in the
namespace the client has access to and then fetching it. The
most likely way for a server to perform it on a client is to
"merge" X into a public branch and hope that the user does
additional work on this branch and pushes it back to the
server without noticing the merge.)
2. As in #1, the attacker chooses an object ID X to steal. The
victim sends an object Y that the attacker already has, and
the attacker falsely claims to have X and not Y, so the victim
sends Y as a delta against X. The delta reveals regions of X
that are similar to Y to the attacker.
Everything below this line in this section is selectively included
from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as
what’s found there:
fetch.recurseSubmodules
This option controls whether git fetch (and the underlying
fetch in git pull) will recursively fetch into populated
submodules. This option can be set either to a boolean value
or to on-demand. Setting it to a boolean changes the behavior
of fetch and pull to recurse unconditionally into submodules
when set to true or to not recurse at all when set to false.
When set to on-demand, fetch and pull will only recurse into a
populated submodule when its superproject retrieves a commit
that updates the submodule’s reference. Defaults to on-demand,
or to the value of submodule.recurse if set.
fetch.fsckObjects
If it is set to true, git-fetch-pack will check all fetched
objects. See transfer.fsckObjects for what’s checked. Defaults
to false. If not set, the value of transfer.fsckObjects is
used instead.
fetch.fsck.<msg-id>
Acts like fsck.<msg-id>, but is used by git-fetch-pack(1)
instead of git-fsck(1). See the fsck.<msg-id> documentation
for details.
fetch.fsck.skipList
Acts like fsck.skipList, but is used by git-fetch-pack(1)
instead of git-fsck(1). See the fsck.skipList documentation
for details.
fetch.unpackLimit
If the number of objects fetched over the Git native transfer
is below this limit, then the objects will be unpacked into
loose object files. However if the number of received objects
equals or exceeds this limit then the received pack will be
stored as a pack, after adding any missing delta bases.
Storing the pack from a push can make the push operation
complete faster, especially on slow filesystems. If not set,
the value of transfer.unpackLimit is used instead.
fetch.prune
If true, fetch will automatically behave as if the --prune
option was given on the command line. See also
remote.<name>.prune and the PRUNING section of git-fetch(1).
fetch.pruneTags
If true, fetch will automatically behave as if the
refs/tags/*:refs/tags/* refspec was provided when pruning, if
not set already. This allows for setting both this option and
fetch.prune to maintain a 1=1 mapping to upstream refs. See
also remote.<name>.pruneTags and the PRUNING section of
git-fetch(1).
fetch.all
If true, fetch will attempt to update all available remotes.
This behavior can be overridden by passing --no-all or by
explicitly specifying one or more remote(s) to fetch from.
Defaults to false.
fetch.output
Control how ref update status is printed. Valid values are
full and compact. Default value is full. See the OUTPUT
section in git-fetch(1) for details.
fetch.negotiationAlgorithm
Control how information about the commits in the local
repository is sent when negotiating the contents of the
packfile to be sent by the server. Set to "consecutive" to use
an algorithm that walks over consecutive commits checking each
one. Set to "skipping" to use an algorithm that skips commits
in an effort to converge faster, but may result in a
larger-than-necessary packfile; or set to "noop" to not send
any information at all, which will almost certainly result in
a larger-than-necessary packfile, but will skip the
negotiation step. Set to "default" to override settings made
previously and use the default behaviour. The default is
normally "consecutive", but if feature.experimental is true,
then the default is "skipping". Unknown values will cause git
fetch to error out.
See also the --negotiate-only and --negotiation-tip options to
git-fetch(1).
fetch.showForcedUpdates
Set to false to enable --no-show-forced-updates in
git-fetch(1) and git-pull(1) commands. Defaults to true.
fetch.parallel
Specifies the maximal number of fetch operations to be run in
parallel at a time (submodules, or remotes when the --multiple
option of git-fetch(1) is in effect).
A value of 0 will give some reasonable default. If unset, it
defaults to 1.
For submodules, this setting can be overridden using the
submodule.fetchJobs config setting.
fetch.writeCommitGraph
Set to true to write a commit-graph after every git fetch
command that downloads a pack-file from a remote. Using the
--split option, most executions will create a very small
commit-graph file on top of the existing commit-graph file(s).
Occasionally, these files will merge and the write may take
longer. Having an updated commit-graph file helps performance
of many Git commands, including git merge-base, git push -f,
and git log --graph. Defaults to false.
fetch.bundleURI
This value stores a URI for downloading Git object data from a
bundle URI before performing an incremental fetch from the
origin Git server. This is similar to how the --bundle-uri
option behaves in git-clone(1). git clone --bundle-uri will
set the fetch.bundleURI value if the supplied bundle URI
contains a bundle list that is organized for incremental
fetches.
If you modify this value and your repository has a
fetch.bundleCreationToken value, then remove that
fetch.bundleCreationToken value before fetching from the new
bundle URI.
fetch.bundleCreationToken
When using fetch.bundleURI to fetch incrementally from a
bundle list that uses the "creationToken" heuristic, this
config value stores the maximum creationToken value of the
downloaded bundles. This value is used to prevent downloading
bundles in the future if the advertised creationToken is not
strictly larger than this value.
The creation token values are chosen by the provider serving
the specific bundle URI. If you modify the URI at
fetch.bundleURI, then be sure to remove the value for the
fetch.bundleCreationToken value before fetching.
Using --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in
submodules that are present locally e.g. in $GIT_DIR/modules/. If
the upstream adds a new submodule, that submodule cannot be
fetched until it is cloned e.g. by git submodule update. This is
expected to be fixed in a future Git version.
git-pull(1)
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-FETCH(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-branch(1), git-bundle(1), git-clone(1), git-config(1), git-fetch(1), git-fetch-pack(1), git-ls-remote(1), git-pull(1), git-remote(1), stg(1), stg-pull(1), gitformat-bundle(5), gitrepository-layout(5), giteveryday(7), gitglossary(7), gitworkflows(7)
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