Git Pull vs Fetch: When To Use Each

Under the hood, git pull is just git fetch followed by git merge. Fetch downloads changes, and merge integrates them into your local repo.

The cheatsheet

Downloading remote commits

git fetch

Downloads commits from a remote repository into your local clone. Your local branches don’t change after fetching, only remote reference pointers are updated.

Incorporating remote commits into your local branches

git merge

Advances your local branch pointer to reflect the downloaded commits. Typically this looks like: git merge origin/main

Doing both at once

git pull

Downloads the commits (git fetch) and updates your local branch (git merge) in a single step.

Rebase commits instead of merge

git pull --rebase

Downloads remote commits then copies local commits and replays them on top of the remote ones.

Pulling with a standard merge

git pull --ff

--ff stands for “fast forward optional”: it creates a merge commit only if the local/remote branches diverged.

Pulling only when nothing diverged

git pull --ff-only

--ff-only stands for “fast forward only” and it never creates a commit or rewrites history if local and remote changes have diverged. If it detects a divergence, it stops, and hands the problem back to you to resolve manually. If you’re new to Git, --ff-only is a good default.

Going further

• Rebase has pros and cons I didn’t cover. Watch the dedicated rebase video before making --rebase a habit.
• Resolving merge conflicts covers merging and merge conflicts in detail.
• To really dive deep, LearnGit.io’s collaboration course is what you want.