pull

• It's the union of git fetch + git merge
• To perform git pull, there must be local tracking branch
• Git pull updates only a single local currently checked out branch

Step

• Branch types
• main (local)
• origin/main (local)

• main (remote)

• git fetch

• main (remote) is copied to origin/main (local)

• main (local) is left untouched

• After fetching, FETCH_HEAD is created pointing to origin/main containing hashes of last commits in all tracking branches

• git merge

• origin/main (local) is merged into main (local)

• The merge (update index + working dir) can be fast-forward or 3-way, alternatively rebase can be specified
• The merge command is git merge FETCH_HEAD or git rebase FETCH_HEAD

Commands

# Pull changes (fetch and merge) for the current checked out branch (tracked branch)
# The commits will be fetched from all branches, but it will only be merged into the current checked out branch
git pull
git pull -v # verbose

# Pull changes from specific remote and branch
git pull "origin" "main" -v # verbose

Pull strategies

# git config pull.ff only: fast-forward only
git pull --ff-only

# git config pull.rebase false: merge (the default strategy)
git pull --no-rebase

# git config pull.rebase true: rebase strategy
git pull --rebase

# pull submodules
git pull --recurse-submodules