What is the difference between ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’ ?

Ok, Lets get this straight,

*git fetch does following things

1. Download all the changes from the remote branch
2. Copy this data in your repository
3. Keep local branch unchanged

You can do a git fetch at any time to update your remote-tracking branches under refs/remotes/<remote>/. This operation never changes any of your own local branches under refs/heads, and is safe to do without changing your working copy.

When you fetch, Git gathers any commits from the target branch that do not exist in your current branch and stores them in your local repository.

However, it does not merge them with your current branch. This is particularly useful if you need to keep your repository up to date, but are working on something that might break if you update your files.

To integrate the commits into your master branch, you use merge.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

*git pull does following things

1. Download all the changes from the remote branch
2. Copy this data in your repository
3. Merge the changes in local branch

git pull is context sensitive, so Git will merge any pulled commits into the branch you are currently working in. git pull automatically merges the commits without letting you review them first. If you don’t closely manage your branches, you may run into frequent conflicts.

A git pull is what you would do to bring a local branch up-to-date with its remote version, while also updating your other remote-tracking branches.

In the simplest terms, git pull does a git fetch followed by a git merge.