--all

Fetch all remotes.

-a

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.

--depth

Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip of each remote branch history. If fetching to a shallow repositorycreated by git clone with --depth=<depth> option (see git-clone(1)), deepen or shorten the history to the specified number ofcommits. 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 eachremote branch history.

--shallow-since

Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to include all reachable commits after <date>.

--shallow-exclude

Deepen or shorten the history of a shallow repository to exclude commits reachable from a specified remote branch or tag. Thisoption 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 byshallow repositories.If the source repository is shallow, fetch as much as possible so that the current repository has the same history as the sourcerepository.

--update-shallow

By default when fetching from a shallow repository, git fetch refuses refs that require updating .git/shallow. This optionupdates .git/shallow and accept such refs.

--dry-run

Show what would be done, without making any changes.

-f

When git fetch is used with <rbranch>:<lbranch> refspec, it refuses to update the local branch <lbranch> unless the remote branch<rbranch> it fetches is a descendant of <lbranch>. This option overrides that check.

-k

Keep downloaded pack.

--multiple

Allow several <repository> and <group> arguments to be specified. No <refspec>s may be specified.

-p

Before fetching, remove any remote-tracking references that no longer exist on the remote. Tags are not subject to pruning ifthey are fetched only because of the default tag auto-following or due to a --tags option. However, if tags are fetched due to anexplicit refspec (either on the command line or in the remote configuration, for example if the remote was cloned with the

-P

Before fetching, remove any local tags that no longer exist on the remote if --prune is enabled. This option should be used morecarefully, unlike --prune it will remove any local references (local tags) that have been created. This option is a shorthand forproviding the explicit tag refspec along with --prune, see the discussion about that in its documentation.See the PRUNING section below for more details.

-n

By default, tags that point at objects that are downloaded from the remote repository are fetched and stored locally. This optiondisables this automatic tag following. The default behavior for a remote may be specified with the remote.<name>.tagOpt setting.See git-config(1).

--refmap

When fetching refs listed on the command line, use the specified refspec (can be given more than once) to map the refs toremote-tracking branches, instead of the values of remote.*.fetch configuration variables for the remote repository. See sectionon "Configured Remote-tracking Branches" for details.

-t

Fetch all tags from the remote (i.e., fetch remote tags refs/tags/* into local tags with the same name), in addition to whateverelse would otherwise be fetched. Using this option alone does not subject tags to pruning, even if --prune is used (though tagsmay be pruned anyway if they are also the destination of an explicit refspec; see --prune).

--recurse-submodules[

This option controls if and under what conditions new commits of populated submodules should be fetched too. It can be used as aboolean option to completely disable recursion when set to no or to unconditionally recurse into all populated submodules whenset to yes, which is the default when this option is used without any value. Use on-demand to only recurse into a populatedsubmodule when the superproject retrieves a commit that updates the submodule’s reference to a commit that isn’t already in thelocal submodule clone.

-j

Number of parallel children to be used for fetching submodules. Each will fetch from different submodules, such that fetchingmany submodules will be faster. By default submodules will be fetched one at a time.

--no-recurse-submodules

Disable recursive fetching of submodules (this has the same effect as using the --recurse-submodules=no option).

--submodule-prefix

Prepend <path> to paths printed in informative messages such as "Fetching submodule foo". This option is used internally whenrecursing over submodules.

--recurse-submodules-default

This option is used internally to temporarily provide a non-negative default value for the --recurse-submodules option. All othermethods of configuring fetch’s submodule recursion (such as settings in gitmodules(5) and git-config(1)) override this option, asdoes specifying --[no-]recurse-submodules directly.

-u

By default git fetch refuses to update the head which corresponds to the current branch. This flag disables the check. This ispurely for the internal use for git pull to communicate with git fetch, and unless you are implementing your own Porcelain youare not supposed to use it.

--upload-pack

When given, and the repository to fetch from is handled by git fetch-pack, --exec=<upload-pack> is passed to the command tospecify non-default path for the command run on the other end.

-q

Pass --quiet to git-fetch-pack and silence any other internally used git commands. Progress is not reported to the standard errorstream.

--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.

-4

Use IPv4 addresses only, ignoring IPv6 addresses.

-6

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 GITURLS 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 fetchare 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 thedestination ref <dst>. The colon can be omitted when <dst> is empty. <src> is typically a ref, but it can also be a fully spelledhex object name.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 empty string, the local ref that matches it is fast-forwardedusing <src>. If the optional plus + is used, the local ref is updated even if it does not result in a fast-forward update.NoteWhen the remote branch you want to fetch is known to be rewound and rebased regularly, it is expected that its new tip willnot be descendant of its previous tip (as stored in your remote-tracking branch the last time you fetched). You would want touse the + sign to indicate non-fast-forward updates will be needed for such branches. There is no way to determine or declarethat a branch will be made available in a repository with this behavior; the pulling user simply must know this is theexpected usage pattern for a branch.GIT URLSIn 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 anddeprecated; do not use it).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.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/· git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/· http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/· ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:· [user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the first colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains acolon. For example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an absolute path or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an sshurl.The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:· ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/· git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/· [user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/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.When Git doesn’t know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if oneexists. 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 beinginvoked. 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 theURLs 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 willstill use the original URL.REMOTESThe 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 bydefault.Named remote in configuration fileYou can choose to provide the name of a remote which you had previously configured using git-remote(1), git-config(1) or even by amanual edit to the $GIT_DIR/config file. The URL of this remote will be used to access the repository. The refspec of this remotewill 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>.Named file in $GIT_DIR/remotesYou 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. Therefspec in this file will be used as default when you do not provide a refspec on the command line. This file should have thefollowing format:URL: one of the above URL formatPush: <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 specifiedfor additional branch mappings.Named file in $GIT_DIR/branchesYou 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. Thisfile 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 thename 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 BRANCHESYou often interact with the same remote repository by regularly and repeatedly fetching from it. In order to keep track of theprogress 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 gitfetch, 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 formaster:, which in turn means "fetch the master branch but I do not explicitly say what remote-tracking branch to update with itfrom the command line"), and the example command will fetch only the master branch. The remote.<repository>.fetch valuesdetermine which remote-tracking branch, if any, is updated. When used in this way, the remote.<repository>.fetch values do nothave 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 commandline.PRUNINGGit has a default disposition of keeping data unless it’s explicitly thrown away; this extends to holding onto local references tobranches 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, ande.g. make the output of commands like git branch -a --contains <commit> needlessly verbose, as well as impacting anything elsethat’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, orremote.<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 theremote.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 fetchfrom 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 frommultiple 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 alongwith --prune to prune local tags that don’t exist on the remote, and force-update those tags that differ. Tag pruning can also beenabled 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 someseemingly strange interactions:# These both fetch tags$ git fetch --no-tags origin 'refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'$ git fetch --no-tags --prune-tags originThe 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, withoutmaking 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 onorigin:$ 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/*'OUTPUTThe 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>]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 otherstring, it will be substituted with * in the other string. For example, master -> origin/master becomes master -> origin/*.flagA 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;tfor 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.summaryFor a successfully fetched ref, the summary shows the old and new values of the ref in a form suitable for using as an argumentto git log (this is <old>..<new> in most cases, and <old>...<new> for forced non-fast-forward updates).fromThe name of the remote ref being fetched from, minus its refs/<type>/ prefix. In the case of deletion, the name of the remote refis "(none)".toThe name of the local ref being updated, minus its refs/<type>/ prefix.reasonA human-readable explanation. In the case of successfully fetched refs, no explanation is needed. For a failed ref, the reasonfor failure is described.EXAMPLES· Update the remote-tracking branches:$ git fetch originThe above command copies all branches from the remote refs/heads/ namespace and stores them to the local refs/remotes/origin/namespace, unless the branch.<name>.fetch option is used to specify a non-default refspec.· Using refspecs explicitly:$ git fetch origin +pu:pu maint:tmpThis updates (or creates, as necessary) branches pu and tmp in the local repository by fetching from the branches (respectively)pu and maint from the remote repository.The pu branch will be updated even if it is 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_HEADThe first command fetches the maint branch from the repository at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git and the second commanduses FETCH_HEAD to examine the branch with git-log(1). The fetched objects will eventually be removed by git’s built-inhousekeeping (see git-gc(1)).SECURITYThe fetch and push protocols are not designed to prevent one side from stealing data from the other repository that was not intendedto be shared. If you have private data that you need to protect from a malicious peer, your best option is to store it in anotherrepository. This applies to both clients and servers. In particular, namespaces on a server are not effective for read accesscontrol; 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 usedto 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’trequired to send the content of X because the victim already has it. Now the victim believes that the attacker has X, and itsends the content of X back to the attacker later. (This attack is most straightforward for a client to perform on a server, bycreating a ref to X in the namespace the client has access to and then fetching it. The most likely way for a server to performit 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 backto 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 theattacker 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 aresimilar to Y to the attacker.BUGSUsing --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in already checked out submodules right now. When e.g. upstream added a newsubmodule in the just fetched commits of the superproject the submodule itself can not be fetched, making it impossible to check outthat submodule later without having to do a fetch again. This is expected to be fixed in a future Git version.