Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Name

fetch

Synopsis

git fetch [remote-name]
git fetch repository [remoteref[:localref]]

Fetch commits from a remote Git repository and adds it to the local one.

In the first form, fetch all branches and tags from the given remote-name (a remote repository set up using git remote). The default remote name is origin.

In the second form, fetch a particular remoteref from repository and store it as local branch localref. The default localref is FETCH_HEAD. The default remoteref is HEAD.

Options

-f, --force

-n, --no-tags

-t, --tags

Examples

To fetch the latest Linux kernel release and compare it against your current work tree:

$ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/
torvalds/linux-2.6.git linux-2.6 master
From git://git.kernel.org/...
 * branch            master -> FETCH_HEAD
$ git diff FETCH_HEAD

To update all the remote tracking branches attached to the remote named origin:

$ git fetch origin
remote: Counting objects: 15, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (10/10), done.
remote: Total 10 (delta 8), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (10/10), done.
From git://git.kernel.org/...
   6544ab2..e3498f3  master     -> origin/master

To retrieve the branch test1 from someone’s repository and save it as the local branch mytest1:

$ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/... test1:mytest1