Git Fetch vs Git Pull

Hello git lovers! Since I’ve heard lot of confusions about the two commands git fetch and git pull, I thought to share my knowledge regarding these commands to you all.

Github has done an excellent job in version controlling chores in recent past. It has become the biggest internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. From this blog, I’m going to talk about functioning of git fetch and git pull commands which is a confusing topic for young tech enthusiasts.

Git Fetch

Git fetch command retrieves all the changes that take place in the remote repository, but it doesn’t compare or merge the changes to the local repository.

Let’s consider the following example

Status before execute git fetch command

Here, remote repository has a new change and the local repository is yet to get the change.

Let’s see the status after executing the git fetch command

Status after execute git fetch command

Git Pull

Git pull command is more like a combination of git fetch command and git merge command.

This command retrieves all the changes in the remote repository and it merges the remote repository copy local repository.

Repository status before and after executing the git push command

If you have multiple branches,

Git pull command retrieves all the changes in the remote repository and it merges the remote repository copy of the active branch (which is the branch you are in while you enter the git pull command) to the corresponding branch in the local repository.

Before and after executing the git pull command in a repository having multiple branches

Here, User has entered the git pull command from branch B. Therefore, First it fetch do the fetching part (fetch new change in branch A and new change in branch B). Then it merges the copy of branch B in the remote repository to the branch B in local repository.

That’s a wrap! Hope you got the knowledge about git fetch and git pull commands.