NAME¶

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

SYNOPSIS¶

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

DESCRIPTION¶

Incorporates changes from a remote repository into the current branch. In its default mode, git pull is shorthand for git fetch followed by git merge FETCH_HEAD.

More precisely, git pull runs git fetch with the given parameters and calls git merge to merge the retrieved branch heads into the current branch. With --rebase, it runs git rebase instead of git merge.

<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

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 remotes/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 cancelled 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¶

Options meant for git pull itself and the underlying git merge must be given before the options meant for git fetch.

-q, --quiet

-v, --verbose

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

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 and rsync can be used for fetching and pushing, but these are inefficient and deprecated; do not use them).

The following syntaxes may be used with them:

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

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.

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(1) 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.

        [remote "<name>"]


                url = <url>


                pushurl = <pushurl>


                push = <refspec>


                fetch = <refspec>

        URL: one of the above URL format


        Push: <refspec>


        Pull: <refspec>

        <url>#<head>

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

        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.

resolve

recursive

octopus

ours

subtree

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 URL: ` line in `$GIT_DIR/remotes/<origin> file 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> file 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

$ git pull origin next

$ 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.

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 can not 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.

SEE ALSO¶

git-fetch(1), git-merge(1), git-config(1)

GIT¶

Part of the git(1) suite