git-pull
(1)Fetch from and integrate with another repository or a local branch
Options
48-q--quietThis is passed to both underlying git-fetch to squelch reporting of during transfer, and underlying git-merge to squelch output during merging.
-v--verbosePass --verbose to git-fetch and git-merge.
--commit--no-commitPerform the merge and commit the result. This option can be used to override --no-commit. Only useful when merging. 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.
-e--edit--no-editInvoke an editor before committing successful mechanical merge to further edit the auto-generated merge message, so that the user can explain and justify the merge. The --no-edit option can be used to accept the auto-generated message (this is generally discouraged). 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.
--cleanupThis option determines how the merge message will be cleaned up before committing. See git-commit(1) for more details. In addition, if the <mode> is given a value of scissors, scissors will be appended to MERGE_MSG before being passed on to the commit machinery in the case of a merge conflict.
--ff-onlyOnly update to the new history if there is no divergent local history. This is the default when no method for reconciling divergent histories is provided (via the --rebase=* flags).
--ff--no-ffWhen merging rather than rebasing, specifies how a merge is handled when the merged-in history is already a descendant of the current history. If merging is requested, --ff is the default unless merging an annotated (and possibly signed) tag that is not stored in its natural place in the refs/tags/ hierarchy, in which case --no-ff is assumed. 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 mer
-S--gpg-sign--no-gpg-signGPG-sign the resulting merge commit. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to the committer identity; if specified, it must be stuck to the option without a space. --no-gpg-sign is useful to countermand both commit.gpgSign configuration variable, and earlier --gpg-sign.
--log--no-logIn addition to branch names, populate the log message with one-line descriptions from at most <n> actual commits that are being merged. See also git-fmt-merge-msg(1). Only useful when merging. With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the actual commits being merged.
--signoff--no-signoffAdd a Signed-off-by trailer by the committer at the end of the commit log message. The meaning of a signoff depends on the project to which you’re committing. For example, it may certify that the committer has the rights to submit the work under the project’s license or agrees to some contributor representation, such as a Developer Certificate of Origin. (See https://developercertificate.org for the one used by the Linux kernel and Git projects.) Consult the documentation or leadership of the project to which you’re contributing to understand how the signoffs are used in that project. The --no
-n--stat--no-statShow a diffstat at the end of the merge. The diffstat is also controlled by the configuration option merge.stat. With -n or --no-stat do not show a diffstat at the end of the merge.
--squash--no-squashProduce the working tree and index state as if a real merge happened (except for the merge information), but do not actually make a commit, move the HEAD, or record $GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD (to cause the next git commit command to create a merge commit). This allows you to create a single commit on top of the current branch whose effect is the same as merging another branch (or more in case of an octopus). 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.
-s--strategyUse the given merge strategy; can be supplied more than once to specify them in the order they should be tried. If there is no -s option, a built-in list of strategies is used instead (ort when merging a single head, octopus otherwise).
-X--strategy-optionPass merge strategy specific option through to the merge strategy.
--verify-signatures--no-verify-signaturesVerify that the tip commit of the side branch being merged is signed with a valid key, i.e. a key that has a valid uid: in the default trust model, this means the signing key has been signed by a trusted key. If the tip commit of the side branch is not signed with a valid key, the merge is aborted. Only useful when merging.
--summary--no-summarySynonyms to --stat and --no-stat; these are deprecated and will be removed in the future.
--autostash--no-autostashAutomatically create a temporary stash entry before the operation begins, record it in the ref MERGE_AUTOSTASH and apply it after the operation ends. This means that you can run the operation on a dirty worktree. However, use with care: the final stash application after a successful merge might result in non-trivial conflicts.
--allow-unrelated-historiesBy default, git merge command refuses to merge histories that do not share a common ancestor. This option can be used to override this safety when merging histories of two projects that started their lives independently. As that is a very rare occasion, no configuration variable to enable this by default exists and will not be added. Only useful when merging.
-r--rebaseWhen true, rebase the current branch on top of the upstream branch after fetching. If there is a remote-tracking branch corresponding to the upstream branch and the upstream branch was rebased since last fetched, the rebase uses that information to avoid rebasing non-local changes. 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 bra
--no-rebaseThis is shorthand for --rebase=false.
-a--appendAppend 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.
--atomicUse an atomic transaction to update local refs. Either all refs are updated, or on error, no refs are updated.
--depthLimit 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.
--deepenSimilar 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-sinceDeepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to include all reachable commits after <date>.
--shallow-excludeDeepen 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.
--unshallowIf 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-shallowBy 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-tipBy 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) SH
--negotiate-onlyDo 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-runShow what would be done, without making any changes.
--porcelainPrint 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.
-f--forceWhen git fetch is used with <src>:<dst> refspec, it may refuse to update the local branch as discussed in the <refspec> part of the git-fetch(1) documentation. This option overrides that check.
-k--keepKeep downloaded pack.
--prefetchModify the configured refspec to place all refs into the refs/prefetch/ namespace. See the prefetch task in git-maintenance(1).
-p--pruneBefore 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.
--no-tagsBy 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).
--refmapWhen 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--tagsFetch 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).
-j--jobsNumber 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.
--set-upstreamIf 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).
--upload-packWhen 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.
--progressProgress 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--server-optionTransmit 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-updatesBy 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-updatesBy 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--ipv4Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.
-6--ipv6Use IPv6 addresses only, ignoring IPv4 addresses.
DESCRIPTION
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":
A---B---C master on origin
/
D---E---F---G master
^
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.
A---B---C origin/master
/ \
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).
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:
[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
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:
[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>
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:
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
$ 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.
$ 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:
$ 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.