GIT-PULL(1)                                                        GIT-PULL(1)



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
              This is passed to both underlying git-fetch to squelch reporting
              of during transfer, and underlying git-merge to squelch output
              during merging.


       -v, --verbose
              Pass --verbose to git-fetch and git-merge.


       --[no-]recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]
              This option controls if new commits of all populated submodules
              should be fetched too (see git-config(1) and gitmodules(5)).
              That might be necessary to get the data needed for merging
              submodule commits, a feature git learned in 1.7.3. Notice that
              the result of a merge will not be checked out in the submodule,
              "git submodule update" has to be called afterwards to bring the
              work tree up to date with the merge result.


   Options related to merging
       --commit, --no-commit
              Perform the merge and commit the result. This option can be used
              to override --no-commit.

              With --no-commit perform the merge but pretend the merge failed
              and do not autocommit, to give the user a chance to inspect and
              further tweak the merge result before committing.


       --ff, --no-ff
              Do not generate a merge commit if the merge resolved as a
              fast-forward, only update the branch pointer. This is the
              default behavior of git-merge.

              With --no-ff Generate a merge commit even if the merge resolved
              as a fast-forward.


       --log[=<n>], --no-log
              In 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).

              With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the actual
              commits being merged.


       --stat, -n, --no-stat
              Show 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-squash
              Produce the working tree and index state as if a real merge
              happened (except for the merge information), but do not actually
              make a commit or move the HEAD, nor 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.


       --ff-only
              Refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status unless the
              current HEAD is already up-to-date or the merge can be resolved
              as a fast-forward.


       -s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>
              Use 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 (git
              merge-recursive when merging a single head, git merge-octopus
              otherwise).


       -X <option>, --strategy-option=<option>
              Pass merge strategy specific option through to the merge
              strategy.


       --summary, --no-summary
              Synonyms to --stat and --no-stat; these are deprecated and will
              be removed in the future.


       -q, --quiet
              Operate quietly. Implies --no-progress.


       -v, --verbose
              Be verbose.


       --progress, --no-progress
              Turn progress on/off explicitly. If neither is specified,
              progress is shown if standard error is connected to a terminal.
              Note that not all merge strategies may support progress
              reporting.


       --rebase
              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.

              See branch.<name>.rebase and branch.autosetuprebase in
              git-config(1) if you want to make git pull always use --rebase
              instead of merging.


              Note

              This is a potentially dangerous mode of operation. It rewrites
              history, which does not bode well when you published that
              history already. Do not use this option unless you have read
              git-rebase(1) carefully.



       --no-rebase
              Override earlier --rebase.


   Options related to fetching
       --all  Fetch all remotes.


       -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.


       --depth=<depth>
              Deepen the history of a shallow repository created by git clone
              with --depth=<depth> option (see git-clone(1)) by the specified
              number of commits.


       -f, --force
              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
              Keep downloaded pack.


       --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).


       -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.


       --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.


       <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).


       <refspec>
              The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +,
              followed by the source ref <src>, followed by a colon :,
              followed by the destination ref <dst>.

              The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched, and if <dst> is
              not empty string, the local ref that matches it is
              fast-forwarded using <src>. If the optional plus + is used, the
              local ref is updated even if it does not result in a
              fast-forward update.



              Note

              If the remote branch from which you want to pull is modified in
              non-linear ways such as being rewound and rebased frequently,
              then a pull will attempt a merge with an older version of
              itself, likely conflict, and fail. It is under these conditions
              that you would want to use the + sign to indicate
              non-fast-forward updates will be needed. There is currently no
              easy 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.



              Note

              You never do your own development on branches that appear on the
              right hand side of a <refspec> colon on Pull: lines; they are to
              be updated by git fetch. If you intend to do development derived
              from a remote branch B, have a Pull: line to track it (i.e.
              Pull: B:remote-B), and have a separate branch my-B to do your
              development on top of it. The latter is created by git branch
              my-B remote-B (or its equivalent git checkout -b my-B remote-B).
              Run git fetch to keep track of the progress of the remote side,
              and when you see something new on the remote branch, merge it
              into your development branch with git pull . remote-B, while you
              are on my-B branch.



              Note

              There is a difference between listing multiple <refspec>
              directly on git pull command line and having multiple Pull:
              <refspec> lines for a <repository> and running git pull command
              without any explicit <refspec> parameters. <refspec> listed
              explicitly on the command line are always merged into the
              current branch after fetching. In other words, if you list more
              than one remote refs, you would be making an Octopus. While git
              pull run without any explicit <refspec> parameter takes default
              <refspec>s from Pull: lines, it merges only the first <refspec>
              found into the current branch, after fetching all the remote
              refs. This is because making an Octopus from remote refs is
              rarely done, while keeping track of multiple remote heads in
              one-go by fetching more than one is often useful.

       Some short-cut notations are also supported.


              o
                  tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>;
                 it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.

              o  A parameter <ref> without a colon is equivalent to <ref>:
                 when pulling/fetching, so it merges <ref> into the current
                 branch without storing the remote branch anywhere locally

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 natively supports ssh, git, http, https, ftp, ftps, and rsync
       protocols. The following syntaxes may be used with them:


       o  ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/

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


       o  [user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

       The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:


       o  ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

       o  [user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

       For local repositories, also supported by git natively, the following
       syntaxes may be used:


       o  /path/to/repo.git/

       o
           file:///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&#8217;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:


       o  <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 git-remote-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:


       o  a remote in the git configuration file: $GIT_DIR/config,

       o  a file in the $GIT_DIR/remotes directory, or

       o  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>.


   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 format
               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&#8217;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.


       resolve
              This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch and
              another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge algorithm.
              It tries to carefully detect criss-cross merge ambiguities and
              is considered generally safe and fast.


       recursive
              This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge algorithm.
              When there is more than one common ancestor that can be used for
              3-way merge, it creates a merged tree of the common ancestors
              and uses that as the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This
              has been reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without
              causing mis-merges by tests done on actual merge commits taken
              from Linux 2.6 kernel development history. Additionally this can
              detect and handle merges involving renames. This is the default
              merge strategy when pulling or merging one branch.

              The recursive strategy can take the following options:



              ours   This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved
                     cleanly by favoring our version. Changes from the other
                     tree that do not conflict with our side are reflected to
                     the merge result.

                     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 This is opposite of ours.


              patience
                     With this option, merge-recursive spends a little extra
                     time to avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to
                     unimportant matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct
                     functions). Use this when the branches to be merged have
                     diverged wildly. See also git-diff(1)  --patience.


              ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol
                     Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change
                     as unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge.
                     Whitespace changes mixed with other changes to a line are
                     not ignored. See also git-diff(1)  -b, -w, and
                     --ignore-space-at-eol.


                     o  If their version only introduces whitespace changes to
                        a line, our version is used;

                     o  If our version introduces whitespace changes but their
                        version includes a substantial change, their version
                        is used;

                     o  Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.

              renormalize
                     This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three
                     stages of a file when resolving a three-way merge. This
                     option is meant to be used when merging branches with
                     different clean filters or end-of-line normalization
                     rules. See "Merging branches with differing
                     checkin/checkout attributes" in gitattributes(5) for
                     details.


              no-renormalize
                     Disables the renormalize option. This overrides the
                     merge.renormalize configuration variable.


              rename-threshold=<n>
                     Controls the similarity threshold used for rename
                     detection. See also git-diff(1)  -M.


              subtree[=<path>]
                     This option is a more advanced form of subtree strategy,
                     where the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be
                     shifted to match with each other when merging. Instead,
                     the specified path is prefixed (or stripped from the
                     beginning) to make the shape of two trees to match.


       octopus
              This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do
              a complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is primarily
              meant to be used for bundling topic branch heads together. This
              is the default merge strategy when pulling or merging more than
              one branch.


       ours   This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the
              merge is always that of the current branch head, effectively
              ignoring all changes from all other branches. It is meant to be
              used to supersede old development history of side branches. Note
              that this is different from the -Xours option to the recursive
              merge strategy.


       subtree
              This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and
              B, if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to
              match the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at
              the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
              ancestor tree.


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&#8217;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:


       1. If branch.<name>.merge configuration for the current branch <name>
          exists, that is the name of the branch at the remote site that is
          merged.

       2. If the refspec is a globbing one, nothing is merged.

       3. Otherwise the remote branch of the first refspec is merged.

EXAMPLES
       o  Update the remote-tracking branches for the repository you cloned
          from, then merge one of them into your current branch:


          $ 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.

       o  Merge into the current branch the remote branch next:


          $ git pull origin next


          This leaves a copy of next temporarily in FETCH_HEAD, but does not
          update any remote-tracking branches. Using remote-tracking branches,
          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 a 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




                                                                   GIT-PULL(1)
