GIT-FETCH(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 27 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 git-fetch(1) 💅

okay bestie, this is the Git Manual page for git-fetch, and it’s literally about downloading objects and refs from another repository. The vibe is fetching refs, updating remote-tracking branches, and writing .git/FETCH_HEAD. Let’s go 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

git-fetch — Download objects and refs from another repository

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

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 — and yep, 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 👑

okay so here come the flags, and bestie, there are so many. Every single one is iconic in its own way ✨

  • --all, --no-all — Fetch all remotes, except for the ones that have the remote.<name>.skipFetchAll configuration variable set. 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. slay, it’s all-or-nothing.
  • --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=<ref> — 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-restrict=(<commit>|<glob>), --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.

--negotiation-restrict is the preferred name for this option; --negotiation-tip is accepted as a synonym.

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.

  • --negotiation-include=(<commit>|<glob>) — Ensure that the commits at the given tips are always sent as "have" lines during fetch negotiation, regardless of what the negotiation algorithm selects. This is useful to guarantee that common history reachable from specific refs is always considered, even when --negotiation-restrict restricts the set of tips or when the negotiation algorithm would otherwise skip them.

This option may be specified more than once; if so, each commit is sent unconditionally.

The argument may be an exact ref name (e.g. refs/heads/release), an object hash, or a glob pattern (e.g. refs/heads/release/{asterisk}). The pattern syntax is the same as for --negotiation-restrict.

If --negotiation-restrict is used, the have set is first restricted by that option and then increased to include the tips specified by --negotiation-include.

If this option is not specified on the command line, then any remote.<name>.negotiationInclude config values for the current remote are used instead.

  • --negotiate-only — Do not fetch anything from the server, and instead print the ancestors of the provided --negotiation-restrict= 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. look, no actual touching 👀
  • --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.

  • --filter=<filter-spec> — Use the partial clone feature and request that the server sends a subset of reachable objects according to a given object filter. When using --filter, the supplied <filter-spec> is used for the partial fetch.

If --filter=auto is used, the filter specification is determined automatically by combining the filter specifications advertised by the server for the promisor remotes that the client accepts (see gitprotocol-v2(5) and the promisor.acceptFromServer configuration option in git-config(1)).

For details on all other available filter specifications, see the --filter=<filter-spec> option in git-rev-list(1).

For example, --filter=blob:none will filter out all blobs (file contents) until needed by Git. Also, --filter=blob:limit=<size> will filter out all blobs of size at least <size>.

  • --write-fetch-head, --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.
  • --auto-maintenance, --no-auto-maintenance, --auto-gc, --no-auto-gc — Run git maintenance run --auto at the end to perform automatic repository maintenance if needed. This is enabled by default.
  • --write-commit-graph, --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> — ok so when you're fetching refs that you listed on the command line, this tells Git to use this refspec (and yeah, you can pass it more than once 🫶) to map those refs onto your remote-tracking branches — instead of using the remote.<name>.fetch config values for that remote repo. Sneaky useful detail: if you hand --refmap an empty <refspec>, Git straight-up ignores your configured refspecs and relies entirely on the ones you gave it on the command line. Full tea is in the "Configured Remote-tracking Branches" section. ✨
  • -t, --tags — grab every tag from the remote (like, fetch remote refs/tags/* into local tags with the same name), on top of whatever else you were already fetching. 💖 Important caveat bestie: using this option alone does not make tags get pruned, even if you're using --prune (though tags can still get pruned if they happen to also be the destination of an explicit refspec — see --prune).
  • --recurse-submodules[=(yes|on-demand|no)] — controls whether (and when) new commits inside submodules get fetched too. When it recurses through submodules, git fetch always tries to fetch "changed" submodules — meaning a submodule that has commits referenced by a newly fetched superproject commit but that are missing from your local submodule clone. A changed submodule can be fetched as long as it's present locally, e.g. in $GIT_DIR/modules/ (peep gitsubmodules(7)); but if upstream adds a new submodule, that one can't be fetched until it's cloned, e.g. by git submodule update.

Setting it to on-demand fetches only changed submodules. Setting it to yes fetches all populated submodules, plus any submodules that are both unpopulated and changed. Setting it to no means submodules never get fetched, periodt. 🚫

When you don't specify it at all, it uses the value of fetch.recurseSubmodules if that's set (see git-config(1)), defaulting to on-demand if it isn't. And when you use this option with no value at all, it defaults to yes.

  • -j <n>, --jobs=<n> — parallelize every form of fetching, up to <n> jobs at a time. ⚡ A value of 0 uses some reasonable default (Git's choice, not yours 💅).

If you specified --multiple, the different remotes get fetched in parallel. If multiple submodules are being fetched, they get fetched in parallel too. Want to control them independently? Use the config settings fetch.parallel and submodule.fetchJobs (see git-config(1)).

Generally, parallel recursive and multi-remote fetches are faster. By default though, fetches are performed sequentially, not in parallel — so this is your glow-up option. 🔥

  • --no-recurse-submodules — turn off recursive submodule fetching (does the exact same thing as --recurse-submodules=no).
  • --set-upstream — if the remote got fetched successfully, add the upstream (tracking) reference, which is what argument-less git-pull(1) and other commands use. More deets in branch.<name>.merge and branch.<name>.remote in git-config(1). 🎀
  • --submodule-prefix=<path> — prepends <path> to paths printed in informative messages like "Fetching submodule foo". This one's used internally when recursing over submodules — not your main character option, iykyk.
  • --recurse-submodules-default=(yes|on-demand) — used internally to temporarily provide a non-negative default value for the --recurse-submodules option. Note: all other methods of configuring fetch's submodule recursion (like settings in gitmodules(5) and git-config(1)) override this option, and so does specifying --[no-]recurse-submodules directly. So it's very much a "backup dancer" situation. 🙈
  • -u, --update-head-ok — by default git fetch refuses to update the head that corresponds to your current branch. This flag disables that check. 🚨 But like — it's purely for internal use, so git pull can talk to git fetch. Unless you're out here implementing your own Porcelain, you are not supposed to use it. No cap.
  • --upload-pack <upload-pack> — when given, and the repo you're fetching from is handled by git fetch-pack, then --exec=<upload-pack> gets passed to the command to specify a non-default path for the command that runs on the other end.
  • -q, --quiet — pass --quiet to git-fetch-pack and shush any other internally used git commands. Progress is not reported to the standard error stream. 🤫
  • -v, --verbose — be verbose. (That's it. That's the whole thing. Speak up bestie 💅)
  • --progress — progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default when it's attached to a terminal, unless -q is specified. This flag forces progress status even when the standard error stream isn't pointed at a terminal. 🦋
  • -o <option>, --server-option=<option> — transmits the given string to the server when communicating using protocol version 2. The string you give it must not contain a NUL or LF character. How the server handles server options (including unknown ones) is entirely server-specific — not our problem, not our business. 🫠 When you pass multiple --server-option=<option>, they all get sent to the other side in the order listed on the command line. And when you pass no --server-option=<option> on the command line at all, the values of the config variable remote.<name>.serverOption are used instead.
  • --show-forced-updates — by default, git checks whether a branch is force-updated during fetch. That can be turned off via fetch.showForcedUpdates, but the --show-forced-updates option guarantees this check happens. See git-config(1). ⭐
  • --no-show-forced-updates — by default, git checks whether 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 (yes, it's the speed-vs-safety tradeoff, pick your fighter 😭). If you use this 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. 🌈

📍 the positional besties (yes they're still part of OPTIONS, we contain multitudes)

  • <repository> — the "remote" repository that's 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 that refers to a list of repositories, as the value of remotes.<group> in the config file. (See git-config(1).)

🎀 <refspec> — the one that actually runs the show

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 <dst>. The colon can be omitted when <dst> is empty. <src> is typically a ref, or a glob pattern with a single * that's used to match a set of refs — 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 pattern. A pattern <refspec> must have one and only one * in both the <src> and <dst>. It maps refs to the destination by replacing the * with the contents matched from the source.

If a refspec is prefixed by ^, it gets interpreted as a negative refspec. Rather than specifying which refs to fetch or which local refs to update, such a refspec instead specifies refs to exclude. A ref is considered to match if it matches at least one positive refspec and does not match any negative refspec. Negative refspecs are lowkey iconic for restricting the scope of a pattern refspec so it won't 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> isn't 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. The exceptions 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 that'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. Like, at all. Don't even try. 💀

Note 🫶 When the remote branch you want to fetch is known to be rewound and rebased regularly, it's 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'd 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. That's the vibe check you have to do manually, sadly. 🙈
  • --stdin — read refspecs, one per line, from stdin, in addition to the ones you provided as arguments. Heads up: the "tag <name>" format is not supported here. ✨

🌐 GIT URLS 🌐

okay so bestie, a URL is literally just the whole "where is this repo and how do I talk to it" situation 💅 In general, URLs contain info 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 — no cap, sometimes it's just vibes and a path.

Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols. (also 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. like, girl, be careful out there.

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>

✨ heads up: 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. ikyk yk 😌

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 the --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.

okay here's the cute part 🎀 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". literally magic ✨

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. bestie gets the ssh treatment on the way out only 💅

📍 REMOTES 📍

The name of one of the following can be used instead of a URL as the <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. huge time-saver, obsessed 😭

💖 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. okay so push is an extrovert and fetch is a one-friend-at-a-time girlie 🦋

🌸 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. yes girl, master, that's the default, don't come for me 🙈

git fetch uses:

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

git push uses:

HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

👑 UPSTREAM BRANCHES 👑

Branches in Git can optionally have an upstream remote branch. Git defaults to using the upstream branch for remote operations, for example:

  • It's the default for git pull or git fetch with no arguments.
  • It's the default for git push with no arguments, with some exceptions. For example, you can use the branch.<name>.pushRemote option to push to a different remote than you pull from, and by default with push.default=simple the upstream branch you configure must have the same name.
  • Various commands, including git checkout and git status, will show you how many commits have been added to your current branch and the upstream since you forked from it, for example "Your branch and origin/main have diverged, and have 2 and 3 different commits each respectively".

The upstream is stored in .git/config, in the "remote" and "merge" fields. For example, if main's upstream is origin/main:

[branch "main"]
   remote = origin
   merge = refs/heads/main

You can set an upstream branch explicitly with git push --set-upstream <remote> <branch> but Git will often automatically set the upstream for you, for example:

  • When you clone a repository, Git will automatically set the upstream for the default branch.
  • If you have the push.autoSetupRemote configuration option set, git push will automatically set the upstream the first time you push a branch.
  • Checking out a remote-tracking branch with git checkout <branch> will automatically create a local branch with that name and set the upstream to the remote branch.
Note 📝 Upstream branches are sometimes referred to as "tracking information", as in "set the branch's tracking information". same thing, different nickname, iykyk 💜

🦋 CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES 🦋

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. like, it's your little progress tracker, your roman empire, your— 🫶

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. slay, it's doing all the work for you ✨
  • 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. it's giving "I'm just the storage girlie, not the decision-maker" 💅

The latter use of the remote.<repository>.fetch values can be overridden by giving the --refmap=<refspec> parameter(s) on the command line. 🔥

🌸 PRUNING 🌸

Okay so bestie, here's the tea: Git's whole default vibe is keeping your data unless you literally throw it away. That energy extends to local references pointing at branches on remotes that have since deleted those branches. Git's just gonna sit there holding them 🫶.

But if you let them pile up, those stale references can lowkey make performance worse on big, busy repos with a lot of branch churn — and they'll make the output of things like git branch -a --contains <commit> needlessly verbose, plus they mess with anything else that works with the complete set of known references.

You can delete these remote-tracking references as a one-off with either of these:

# While fetching
$ git fetch --prune <name>

# Only prune, don't fetch
$ git remote prune <name>

And if you wanna prune as part of your normal workflow without having to remember to run that every time, set fetch.prune globally, or remote.<name>.prune per-remote in the config. See git-config(1).

Now here's where it gets tricky and more specific 👀. The pruning feature doesn't actually care about branches — instead it prunes local ←→ remote-references as a function of the refspec of the remote (see <refspec> and CONFIGURED REMOTE-TRACKING BRANCHES above).

So if the refspec for the remote includes, like, refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*, or you manually run something like git fetch --prune <name> "refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*", then it won't be stale remote tracking branches getting deleted — it'll be any local tag that doesn't exist on the remote 😭.

That 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. Yikes.

⚠️ 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. No cap, be careful.

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. Which 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. Slay 💅.

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 ✨

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/*. Cute, right? 🎀

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 🌈

  • 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. Iconic behaviour honestly.

  • 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. That + is doing so much work 💅.

  • 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 🦋

Real talk for a sec, bestie — 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 ⚙️

Okay bestie, everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation — the content is literally the same as what's found there, no cap. 🫶

  • fetch.recurseSubmodules — this one controls whether git fetch (and the underlying fetch inside git pull) will recursively fetch into populated submodules. You can set it to a boolean value or to on-demand. Setting a boolean flips the behavior of fetch and pull to recurse unconditionally into submodules when true, or to not recurse at all when false. And when it's 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 that's set. ✨
  • fetch.fsckObjects — if it's set to true, git-fetch-pack will check all fetched objects. Peep transfer.fsckObjects for what's actually checked. Defaults to false. And if it's not set, the value of transfer.fsckObjects is used instead. 🔍
  • fetch.fsck.<msg-id> — acts like fsck.<msg-id>, but it's used by git-fetch-pack(1) instead of git-fsck(1). See the fsck.<msg-id> documentation for the details, iykyk.
  • fetch.fsck.skipList — acts like fsck.skipList, but again it's git-fetch-pack(1) using it instead of git-fsck(1). See the fsck.skipList documentation for details.
  • fetch.unpackLimit — okay so if the number of objects fetched over the Git native transfer is below this limit, then the objects get unpacked into loose object files. But 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 it's 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 it wasn't set already. This lets you set 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 — controls 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 — controls 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 it to consecutive to use an algorithm that walks over consecutive commits checking each one. Set it 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 it 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 it 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-restrict 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. (Yes, really — don't skip this step, bestie.)

  • 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.

  • fetch.followRemoteHEAD — when fetching using a default refspec, this setting determines how to handle differences between a fetched remote's HEAD and the local remotes/<name>/HEAD symbolic-ref. Its value is one of:
    • create — create remotes/<name>/HEAD if a ref exists on the remote, but not locally. An existing symbolic-ref will not be touched. This is the default value. 💅
    • warn — display a warning if the remote advertises a different HEAD than what is set locally. Behaves like "create" if the local symbolic-ref doesn't exist.
    • always — silently update remotes/<name>/HEAD whenever the remote advertises a new value.
    • never — never create or modify the remotes/<name>/HEAD symbolic-ref.

💀 BUGS 💀

Okay listen — using --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in submodules that are present locally, e.g. in $GIT_DIR/modules/. So 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. Not us, not our fault, it's giving "known limitation" fr fr. 🙈

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

👑 GIT 👑

Part of the git(1) suite. 🌟

That's the whole page, bestie — you ate that. 💖 This gorgeousness is Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27, and it's GIT-FETCH(1) in all its iconic glory. Go forth and fetch. 🧚✨🎀
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