Fetching a remote

When working with other people's repositories, there are a few basic Git commands to remember:

• git clone
• git fetch
• git merge
• git pull

These commands are very useful when interacting with a remote repository.clone and fetch download remote code from a repository's remote URL to your local computer, merge is used to merge different people's work together with yours, and pull is a combination of fetch and merge.

We'll go in-depth on these commands below.

Clone

To grab a complete copy of another user's repository, use git clonelike this:

$ git clone https://hostname/USERNAME/REPOSITORY.git
# Clones a repository to your computer

You can choose from several different URLs when cloning a repository. While logged in to GitHub, these URLs are available below the repository details:

When you run git clone, the following actions occur:

• A new folder called repo is made
• It is initialized as a Git repository
• A remote named origin is created, pointing to the URL you cloned from
• All of the repository's files and commits are downloaded there
• The default branch (usually called master) is checked out

For every branch foo in the remote repository, a corresponding remote-tracking branchrefs/remotes/origin/foo is created in your local repository. You can usually abbreviate such remote-tracking branch names to origin/foo.

Fetch

Use git fetch to retrieve new work done by other people. Fetching from a repository grabs all the new remote-tracking branches and tags without merging those changes into your own branches.

If you already have a local repositorywith a remote URLset up for the desired project, you can grab all the new information by usinggit fetch *remotename* in the terminal:

$ git fetch remotename
# Fetches updates made to a remote repository

Otherwise, you can always add a new remoteand then fetch.

Merge

Merging combines your local changes with changes made by others.

Typically, you'd merge a remote-tracking branch (i.e., a branch fetched from a remote repository) with your local branch:

$ git merge remotename/branchname
# Merges updates made online with your local work

Pull

git pull is a convenient shortcut for completing both git fetch and git mergein the same command:

$ git pull remotename branchname
# Grabs online updates and merges them with your local work

Because pull performs a merge on the retrieved changes, you should ensure that your local work is committed before running the pull command. If you run intoa merge conflictyou cannot resolve, or if you decide to quit the merge, you can use git merge --abortto take the branch back to where it was in before you pulled.

Further reading

• "Working with Remotes" from the Pro Git book"