Update code with fetch and pull

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Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015

Update the code in your local repo with the changes from other members of your team using the following commands:

• fetch , which downloads the changes from your remote repo but doesn't apply them to your code.
• merge , which applies changes taken from fetch to a branch on your local repo.
• pull , which is a combined command that does a fetch and then a merge.

In this tutorial you learn how to:

• Download changes with fetch
• Update branches with merge
• Fetch and merge with pull
• Update your local branch with the latest changes from main

Tip

If there's a merge conflict between a commit you haven't pushed yet and a commit you're merging or pulling, resolve those conflicts before you finish updating your code.

Download changes with fetch

You download changes to your local branch from the remote through fetch. Fetch asks the remote repo for all commits and new branches that others have pushed but you don't have and downloads them into your repo, creating local branches as needed.

Fetch doesn't merge any changes into your local branches. It only downloads the new commits for your review.

Tip

To help keep your branches list clean and up to date, configure Git to prune remote branches during fetch. You can configure this setting from the command line or from within Visual Studio.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Visual Studio uses the Sync view in Team Explorer to fetch changes. Changes downloaded by fetch aren't applied until you Pull or Sync the changes.

1. In Team Explorer, select the Home button and choose Sync.

   

2. In Synchronization, select Fetch to update the incoming commits list.

   

   There are two Fetch links, one near the top and one in the Incoming Commits section. You can use either one.

3. Review the results of the fetch operation in under Incoming Commits.

   

Command Line

Run the git fetch command from the command line to download changes to your local branch.

git fetch

After you run git fetch, you'll see results similar to the following example:

remote: Found 3 objects to send. (9 ms)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
   e2ccee6..55b26a5  feature1   -> origin/feature1

Update branches with merge

Apply changes downloaded through fetch using the merge command. Merge takes the commits retrieved from fetch and tries to add them to your local branch. The merge keeps the commit history of your local changes. When you share your branch with push, Git knows how others should merge your changes.

The challenge with merge is when a commit taken from fetch conflicts with an existing unpushed commit on your branch. Git is generally very smart about resolving merge conflicts automatically, but sometimes you must resolve merge conflicts manually and complete the merge with a new merge commit.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Team Explorer merges when you do a Pull or a Sync from the Changes view.

Sync is a combined operation of pulling remote changes and then pushing local ones. This operation synchronizes the commits on the local and remote branch.

1. In Team Explorer, select the Home button and choose Sync.

   

2. In Synchronization, select Sync.

   

3. Review the confirmation message when the sync operation completes.

   

Command Line

Running merge without any flags or parameters adds the commits downloaded from fetch into the local branch. Git adds a merge commit if you have any conflicts. This merge commit has two parent commits, one for each branch, and contains the changes committed to resolve the conflicts between branches.

> git merge

 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) 

Specify the --no-commit parameter to merge without committing. The command attempts to merge but not commit the final changes. This parameter gives you a chance to inspect the changed files before finalizing the merge with a commit.

Fetch and merge with pull

Pull does a fetch and then a merge to download the commits and update your local branch in one command instead of two. Use pull to make your branch current with the remote when you aren't worried about reviewing the changes before merging them into your own branch.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Open the Team Explorer and open the Sync view. Then click the Pull link under Incoming Commits to pull remote changes and merge them into your local branch. Pulling updates files in your open project, so make sure to commit your changes before pulling.

1. In Team Explorer, select the Home button and choose Sync.

   

2. In Synchronization, choose Pull to fetch remote changes and merge them into your local branch.

   

   There are two Pull links, one near the top and one in the Incoming Commits section. You can use either one.

3. Review the confirmation message when the pull operation completes.

   

Command Line

git pull without any options does a fetch of the changes you don't have from origin and will merge the changes for your current branch.

> git pull

Updating 55b26a5..e7926cd
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) 

Pull a remote branch into a local one by passing remote branch information into pull:

> git pull origin users/frank/bugfix

A pull command is a useful way to directly merge the work from remote branch into your local branch.

Update your branch with the latest changes from main

When working in a branch, you may want to incorporate the latest changes from the main branch into your branch. There are two approaches you can use: rebase or merge.

• Rebase takes the changes made in the commits in your current branch and replays them on the history of another branch. Rebasing rewrites the commit history of your current branch. The history starts from the most recent commit in the target branch of the rebase.
• Merge merges the changes from the source branch to the target branch using a merge commit, which becomes part of the commit history.

Note

This article demonstrates the merge approach. For more information on rebase and guidance on which method is right for your scenario, see Apply changes with Rebase - When to rebase vs. merge and Rebase vs merge from the Pro Git book.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Note

The git pull origin main command combines git fetch and git merge commands. To do this properly in Visual Studio integration, you will need to Sync in Team Explorer to do the fetch part. This ensures your local git repository is up to date with its remote origin.

To merge the latest changes from the main branch to your branch:

1. In Team Explorer, select the Home button and choose Branches.

2. Check out your target branch. Right-click the target branch, and choose Merge From.

   

3. Specify a Merge from branch, which is main in this example, and then select Merge.

   

   If there are any merge conflicts, Team Explorer tells you now. Resolve the merge commits before the next step.

4. Enter a commit message and select Commit Staged.

   

5. When you're ready to push your local commits, including your new merge commit, to the remote server, choose Push from the Synchronization view.

   

Command Line

To merge the latest changes from main into your branch, in this example named users/jamal/readme-fix, you can use the following commands:

> git checkout users/jamal/readme-fix
> git pull origin main
> git push

git pull origin main fetches and merges the contents of the main branch with your branch and creates a merge commit. If there are any merge conflicts, git shows you after the pull. Resolve the merge commits before you continue. When you're ready to push your local commits, including your new merge commit, to the remote server, run git push.

Next steps

Share code with push

Resolve merge conflicts