Fetch

Git · Reference cheat sheet

📖 Overview

git fetch downloads objects and updates remote-tracking refs from a remote without changing your working tree or current branch. Use it to inspect upstream changes before merging or rebasing.

🧩 Core concepts

• Remote — named location (origin) with URL(s).
• Remote-tracking branches — updated to match the remote (e.g. origin/main).
• Prune — remove stale remote-tracking refs deleted upstream.
• Tags — default fetch may omit tags; --tags pulls them.
• Refspecs — control which refs are fetched into which local names.
• Fetch ≠ pull — pull is fetch + integrate (merge/rebase).

💡 Examples

# Fetch default remote
git fetch
git fetch origin

# Fetch all remotes
git fetch --all

# Prune deleted remote branches
git fetch --prune
git fetch origin --prune

# Fetch one branch
git fetch origin main

# Include tags
git fetch --tags

# Inspect after fetch
git log --oneline HEAD..origin/main
git diff main origin/main

# Dry-run prune
git fetch --prune --dry-run

⚠️ Pitfalls

• Fetch never updates your checked-out branch — you must merge/rebase/reset intentionally.
• Without prune, deleted remote branches still appear in git branch -r.
• Shallow clones (--depth) need deepen/unshallow for full history operations.
• Multiple remotes: git fetch alone only hits the current branch’s remote (or origin by config).

🔗 Related

• Pull
• Push
• Merge
• Rebase
• Branch