更改存储库的远程分支并仅拉出更改

Question

I have a remote repository that has a lot of branches. Every time there is a new version, a new branch is created. How can I, when a new version is available, change the branch and pull the changes avoiding to clone it all again. I want to only download the new committs.

Answer 1

Executive Summery:

git fetch origin
git checkout new-version`

Where origin is the remote name and new-version is the branch name.

Details:

The documentation for git fetch says:

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.

This basically means that it goes and downloads the history of the repository from the remote. However, a repository can have multiple remotes, so git fetch can fetch either one or more of them using the --all flag.

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 using a refspec that fetches tags explicitly, you can fetch tags that do not point into branches you are interested in as well.

Meaning that if you had, for example, branches A, B & C on the remote, and on local you were working on branch C . If you git fetch origin C , by default, this will also fetch the tags pointing to that branch, but it will not fetch those related to other branches, for instance A and B .
If you want to fetch all tags, you just add the --tags to the command.

Finally,

When no remote is specified, by default the origin remote will be used, unless there's an upstream branch configured for the current branch.

Resources:

• git fetch documentation , it's all well explained.
• The Git Pro book , chapter 3.5 goes through this.
• You may also want to look at this related question as well: What is the difference between 'git pull' and 'git fetch'?