git-pull(1)

—

NAME

git-pull - Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch

SYNOPSIS

bash

git pull\n [<options>] [<repository> [<refspec>...]]

Incorporates changes from a remote repository into the current branch. If the current branch is behind the remote, then by default it will fast-forward the current branch to match the remote. If the current branch and the remote have diverged, the user needs to specify how to reconcile the divergent branches with --rebase or --no-rebase (or the corresponding configuration option in pull.rebase).

More precisely, git pull runs git fetch with the given parameters and then depending on configuration options or command line flags, will call either git rebase or git merge to reconcile diverging branches.

<repository> should be the name of a remote repository as passed to git-fetch(1). <refspec> 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 <repository> and <branch> are read from the "remote" and "merge" configuration for the current branch as set by git-branch(1) --track.

Assume the following history exists and the current branch is "master":

bash


\n
          A---B---C master on origin
\n
         /
\n
    D---E---F---G master
\n
        ^
\n
        origin/master in your repository

Then "git pull" will fetch and replay the changes from the remote master branch since it diverged from the local master (i.e., E) until its current commit (C) on top of master and record the result in a new commit along with the names of the two parent commits and a log message from the user describing the changes.

bash


\n
          A---B---C origin/master
\n
         /         \
\n
    D---E---F---G---H master

See git-merge(1) for details, including how conflicts are presented and handled.

In Git 1.7.0 or later, to cancel a conflicting merge, use git reset --merge. Warning: In older versions of Git, running git pull with uncommitted changes is discouraged: while possible, it leaves you in a state that may be hard to back out of in the case of a conflict.

If any of the remote changes overlap with local uncommitted changes, the merge will be automatically canceled and the work tree untouched. It is generally best to get any local changes in working order before pulling or stash them away with git-stash(1).

OPTIONS

-q, --quiet

-v, --verbose

--[no-]recurse-submodules[=(yes|on-demand|no)]

If the checkout is done via rebase, local submodule commits are rebased as well.

If the update is done via merge, the submodule conflicts are resolved and checked out.

--commit, --no-commit

With --no-commit perform the merge and stop just before creating a merge commit, to give the user a chance to inspect and further tweak the merge result before committing.

Note that fast-forward updates do not create a merge commit and therefore there is no way to stop those merges with --no-commit. Thus, if you want to ensure your branch is not changed or updated by the merge command, use --no-ff with --no-commit.

--edit, -e, --no-edit

Older scripts may depend on the historical behaviour of not allowing the user to edit the merge log message. They will see an editor opened when they run git merge. To make it easier to adjust such scripts to the updated behaviour, the environment variable GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT can be set to no at the beginning of them.

--cleanup=<mode>

--ff-only

--ff, --no-ff

With --ff, when possible resolve the merge as a fast-forward (only update the branch pointer to match the merged branch; do not create a merge commit). When not possible (when the merged-in history is not a descendant of the current history), create a merge commit.

With --no-ff, create a merge commit in all cases, even when the merge could instead be resolved as a fast-forward.

-S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign

--log[=<n>], --no-log

With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the actual commits being merged.

--signoff, --no-signoff

The --no-signoff option can be used to countermand an earlier --signoff option on the command line.

--stat, -n, --no-stat

With -n or --no-stat do not show a diffstat at the end of the merge.

--squash, --no-squash

With --no-squash perform the merge and commit the result. This option can be used to override --squash.

With --squash, --commit is not allowed, and will fail.

Only useful when merging.

--[no-]verify

-s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>

-X <option>, --strategy-option=<option>

--verify-signatures, --no-verify-signatures

Only useful when merging.

--summary, --no-summary

--autostash, --no-autostash

--allow-unrelated-histories

Only useful when merging.

-r, --rebase[=(false|true|merges|interactive)]

When set to merges, rebase using git rebase --rebase-merges so that the local merge commits are included in the rebase (see git-rebase(1) for details).

When false, merge the upstream branch into the current branch.

When interactive, enable the interactive mode of rebase.

See pull.rebase, branch.<name>.rebase and branch.autoSetupRebase in git-config(1) if you want to make git pull always use --rebase instead of merging.

--no-rebase

--[no-]all

-a, --append

--atomic

--depth=<depth>

--deepen=<depth>

--shallow-since=<date>

--shallow-exclude=<revision>

--unshallow

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

--negotiation-tip=<commit|glob>

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

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

--porcelain

This is incompatible with --recurse-submodules=[yes|on-demand] and takes precedence over the fetch.output config option.

-f, --force

-k, --keep

--prefetch

-p, --prune

--no-tags

--refmap=<refspec>

-t, --tags

-j, --jobs=<n>

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.

--set-upstream

--upload-pack <upload-pack>

--progress

-o <option>, --server-option=<option>

--show-forced-updates

--no-show-forced-updates

-4, --ipv4

-6, --ipv6

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.

GIT URLS

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

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

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

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:

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

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:

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:

bash


\n
        [url "\n<actual-url-base>\n"]
\n
                insteadOf = \n<other-url-base>

For example, with this:

bash


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

bash


\n
        [url "\n<actual-url-base>\n"]
\n
                pushInsteadOf = \n<other-url-base>

For example, with this:

bash


\n
        [url "ssh://example.org/"]
\n
                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:

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:

bash


\n
        [remote "<name>"]
\n
                url = <URL>
\n
                pushurl = <pushurl>
\n
                push = <refspec>
\n
                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:

bash


\n
        URL: one of the above URL formats
\n
        Push: <refspec>
\n
        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:

bash


\n
        <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:

bash


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

git push uses:

bash


\n
        HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

MERGE STRATEGIES

The merge mechanism (git merge and git pull commands) allows the backend merge strategies to be chosen with -s option. Some strategies can also take their own options, which can be passed by giving -X<option> arguments to git merge and/or git pull.

ort

The ort strategy can take the following options:

ours

This should not be confused with the ours merge strategy, which does not even look at what the other tree contains at all. It discards everything the other tree did, declaring our history contains all that happened in it.

theirs

ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol, ignore-cr-at-eol

renormalize

no-renormalize

find-renames[=<n>]

rename-threshold=<n>

subtree[=<path>]

recursive

The recursive strategy takes the same options as ort. However, there are three additional options that ort ignores (not documented above) that are potentially useful with the recursive strategy:

patience

diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]

no-renames

resolve

octopus

ours

subtree

With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default, ort), if a change is made on both branches, but later reverted on one of the branches, that change will be present in the merged result; some people find this behavior confusing. It occurs because only the heads and the merge base are considered when performing a merge, not the individual commits. The merge algorithm therefore considers the reverted change as no change at all, and substitutes the changed version instead.

DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR

Often people use git pull without giving any parameter. Traditionally, this has been equivalent to saying git pull origin. However, when configuration branch.<name>.remote is present while on branch <name>, that value is used instead of origin.

In order to determine what URL to use to fetch from, the value of the configuration remote.<origin>.url is consulted and if there is not any such variable, the value on the URL: line in $GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin> is used.

In order to determine what remote branches to fetch (and optionally store in the remote-tracking branches) when the command is run without any refspec parameters on the command line, values of the configuration variable remote.<origin>.fetch are consulted, and if there aren’t any, $GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin> is consulted and its Pull: lines are used. In addition to the refspec formats described in the OPTIONS section, you can have a globbing refspec that looks like this:

bash

refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

A globbing refspec must have a non-empty RHS (i.e. must store what were fetched in remote-tracking branches), and its LHS and RHS must end with /*. The above specifies that all remote branches are tracked using remote-tracking branches in refs/remotes/origin/ hierarchy under the same name.

The rule to determine which remote branch to merge after fetching is a bit involved, in order not to break backward compatibility.

If explicit refspecs were given on the command line of git pull, they are all merged.

When no refspec was given on the command line, then git pull uses the refspec from the configuration or $GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin>. In such cases, the following rules apply:

EXAMPLES

bash

$ git pull
$ git pull origin

Normally the branch merged in is the HEAD of the remote repository, but the choice is determined by the branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge options; see git-config(1) for details.

bash

$ git pull origin next

This leaves a copy of next temporarily in FETCH_HEAD, and updates the remote-tracking branch origin/next. The same can be done by invoking fetch and merge:

bash

$ git fetch origin
$ git merge origin/next

If you tried a pull which resulted in complex conflicts and would want to start over, you can recover with git reset.

SECURITY

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:

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 cannot 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.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

GIT URLS

REMOTES

Named remote in configuration file

Named file in $GIT_DIR/remotes

Named file in $GIT_DIR/branches

MERGE STRATEGIES

DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR

EXAMPLES

SECURITY

BUGS

SEE ALSO

GIT