DESCRIPTION
-----------
-Fetches named heads or tags from one or more other repositories,
-along with the objects necessary to complete them.
+Fetch branches and/or tags (collectively, "refs") from one or more
+other repositories, along with the objects necessary to complete their
+histories. Remote-tracking branches are updated (see the description
+of <refspec> below for ways to control this behavior).
-The ref names and their object names of fetched refs are stored
-in `.git/FETCH_HEAD`. This information is left for a later merge
-operation done by 'git merge'.
-
-By default, tags are auto-followed. This means that when fetching
-from a remote, any tags on the remote that point to objects that exist
-in the local repository are fetched. The effect is to fetch tags that
+By default, any tag that points into the histories being fetched is
+also fetched; the effect is to fetch tags that
point at branches that you are interested in. This default behavior
-can be changed by using the --tags or --no-tags options, by
-configuring remote.<name>.tagopt, or by using a refspec that fetches
-tags explicitly.
+can be changed by using the --tags or --no-tags options or by
+configuring remote.<name>.tagopt. By using a refspec that fetches tags
+explicitly, you can fetch tags that do not point into branches you
+are interested in as well.
-'git fetch' can fetch from either a single named repository,
+'git fetch' can fetch from either a single named repository or URL,
or from several repositories at once if <group> is given and
there is a remotes.<group> entry in the configuration file.
(See linkgit:git-config[1]).
When no remote is specified, by default the `origin` remote will be used,
unless there's an upstream branch configured for the current branch.
+The names of refs that are fetched, together with the object names
+they point at, are written to `.git/FETCH_HEAD`. This information
+may be used by scripts or other git commands, such as linkgit:git-pull[1].
+
OPTIONS
-------
include::fetch-options.txt[]
The `pu` branch will be updated even if it is does not fast-forward,
because it is prefixed with a plus sign; `tmp` will not be.
+* Peek at a remote's branch, without configuring the remote in your local
+repository:
++
+------------------------------------------------
+$ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git maint
+$ git log FETCH_HEAD
+------------------------------------------------
++
+The first command fetches the `maint` branch from the repository at
+`git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git` and the second command uses
+`FETCH_HEAD` to examine the branch with linkgit:git-log[1]. The fetched
+objects will eventually be removed by git's built-in housekeeping (see
+linkgit:git-gc[1]).
BUGS
----