git-fetch(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | GIT URLS | REMOTES | CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES | PRUNING | OUTPUT | EXAMPLES | SECURITY | CONFIGURATION | BUGS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-FETCH(1)                   Git Manual                   GIT-FETCH(1)

NAME         top

       git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository

SYNOPSIS         top

       git fetch [<options>] [<repository> [<refspec>...]]
       git fetch [<options>] <group>
       git fetch --multiple [<options>] [(<repository> | <group>)...]
       git fetch --all [<options>]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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).

OPTIONS         top

       --[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=<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=<revision>
           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.

       --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 ref <dst>. The colon can be omitted when
           <dst> is empty. <src> is typically a ref, 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 same prefix. A pattern <refspec>
           must have a * 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.

GIT URLS         top

       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.

REMOTES         top

       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>

CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES         top

       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.

PRUNING         top

       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/*'

OUTPUT         top

       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.

EXAMPLES         top

       •   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)).

SECURITY         top

       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.

CONFIGURATION         top

       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.

BUGS         top

       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.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-pull(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       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 2024-06-14.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-12.)  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 2.45.2.492.gd63586         2024-06-12                   GIT-FETCH(1)

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