Pulling to Keep up-to-date with Changes
When working on a team project, it’s important to ensure everyone stays up to date.
Before starting work on a project, you should update your local copy with the latest changes.
With Git, you can do this using the pull command.
pull combines two commands:
Let’s dive deeper into how fetch, merge, and pull work.
Git Fetch
fetch retrieves the entire change history of a tracked branch or repository.
In your local Git, use fetch to update and see what has changed on GitHub.
Example
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[user@localhost] $
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git fetch origin
remote: Enumerating objects: 5, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (5/5), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), 733 bytes | 3.00 KiB/s, done.
From https://github.com/code7school-test/hello-world
e0b6038..d29d69f master -> origin/master
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Now that we’ve retrieved the latest changes, we can check our status:
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[user@localhost] $
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git status
On branch master
Your branch is behind ‘origin/master’ by 1 commit, and can be fast-forwarded.
(use “git pull” to update your local branch)
nothing to commit, working tree clean
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We are behind origin/master by one commit. This is likely due to the updated README.md, but let’s double-check by viewing the log.
Example
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[user@localhost] $
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git log origin/master
commit d29d69ffe2ee9e6df6fa0d313bb0592b50f3b853 (origin/master)
Author: code7schools-test <[email protected]>
Date: Fri Mar 26 14:59:14 2021 +0100
Updated README.md with a line about GitHub
commit e0b6038b1345e50aca8885d8fd322fc0e5765c3b (HEAD -> master)
Merge: dfa79db 1f1584e
Author: code7school-test
Date: Fri Mar 26 12:42:56 2021 +0100
merged with hello-world-images after fixing conflicts
...
...
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That looks as expected, but we can also verify it by displaying the differences between our local master and origin/master.
Example
| [user@localhost] $ |
git diff origin/master
diff –git a/README.md b/README.md
index 23a0122..a980c39 100644
— a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2,6 +2,4 @@
Hello World repository for Git tutorial
This is an example repository for the Git tutoial on https://www.code7school.com
-This repository is built step by step in the tutorial.
–
-It now includes steps for GitHub
+This repository is built step by step in the tutorial.
\ No newline at end of file
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That looks exactly as expected! Now we can proceed with the merge.
Git Merge
Merging combines the current branch with a specified branch.
Since we’ve confirmed the updates are as expected, we can merge our current branch (master) with origin/master.
Example
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[user@localhost] $
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git merge origin/master
Updating e0b6038..d29d69f
Fast-forward
README.md | 4 +++-
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
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Check our status again to ensure we are up to date.
Example
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[user@localhost] $
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git status
On branch master
Your branch is up to date with ‘origin/master’.
nothing to commit, working tree clean
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There you go! Your local Git repository is up to date!
Git Pull
What if you just want to update your local repository without all those steps?
- The pull command combines fetch and merge to bring all changes from a remote repository into the current branch you’re working on.
- Now, make another change to the Readme.md file on GitHub.
- Use the
pull command to update our local Git repository.
Example
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[user@localhost] $
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git pull origin
remote: Enumerating objects: 5, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (5/5), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), 794 bytes | 1024 bytes/s, done.\
From https://github.com/code7school-test/hello-world
a7cdd4b..ab6b4ed master -> origin/master
Updating a7cdd4b..ab6b4ed
Fast-forward
README.md | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
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That’s how you keep your local Git repository up to date with changes from a remote repository. In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at how the push command works on GitHub.
