GIT-FETCH(1) Git Manual GIT-FETCH(1) NAME git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository SYNOPSIS git fetch [] [ [...]] git fetch [] git fetch --multiple [] [( | )...] git fetch --all [] DESCRIPTION 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 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-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). OPTIONS --[no-]all Fetch all remotes. 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= 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= 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= 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= Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to include all reachable commits after . --shallow-exclude= 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= 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 : refspec, it may refuse to update the local branch as discussed in the part below. This option overrides that check. -k, --keep Keep downloaded pack. --multiple Allow several and arguments to be specified. No 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..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= 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 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= 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..merge and branch..remote in git-config(1). --submodule-prefix= Prepend 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 When given, and the repository to fetch from is handled by git fetch-pack, --exec= 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