JIYIK CN >

Git provides us a platform where we can maintain multiple separate development commits for a new project called branches. We can restore the latest version of a branch from a remote repository as needed or we can restore all branches at once as per the current requirement.

The important work we do on remote branches every day is downloading.

The remote data we are using is worth downloading or we can say it is important to download it because it is similar to a snapshot. It reaches the same criteria as before because we downloaded the data exactly from the remote branch using fetch or pull command.

This fact should not be forgotten when checking out remote branches and commits.

This article will discuss how to use the git fetch -alland git pull -allcommands to restore changes from a remote repository.

Get the source branch in Git

$ git fetch origin

git fetchThe command only downloads new features from the remote repository. It does not merge any of these new features into our recent working files.

Using fetch, we can get an updated view of the entire commit that was pushed to the remote repository. Since it is harmless, we are sure that fetch will never take control and potentially destroy anything in our current local branch.

Pull the source branch in Git

$ git pull origin master

git pullThe pull command is used to upgrade our current HEAD branch with the new commits from the remote repository. This means that the pull is not only based on downloading the new feature, but also explicitly merging it into our most recent working copy files.

The results of git are as follows.

• As we know, git pullefforts are made to combine remote changes with our local files, which may result in merge conflicts in local branches.
• Unlike fetch, git pullit is safe enough to just start with a clean working copy. This clarifies that we should not have any uncommitted local changes before we pull in our local branch.

Get all branches in Git

To fetch all branches from all remote repositories, we will --allrun the command with the -f option git fetch:

git fetch --all

Pull all branches in Git

It is safe to update the local copy of the remote repository with the help of git fetch command, but the problem is that it does not upgrade the local branches.

In order to update our local branches, we need to pull each branch. This cannot be performed using fetch, so we will implement it manually.

To update the local branch that will track the remote branch, we will run the command with --allthe -r option git pull:

git pull --all

However, this can only be done for local branches that track remote branches. In order to track all remote branches, we will execute the following command before git pull:

git branch -r | grep -v '\->' | while read remote; do git branch --track