Practical Git: Sync local and remote repos with git pull
git pull lets us get the latest changes from our project's remote repo (most likely from co-workers or other developers working on our project) and merge (combine) them with our local code. It's kind of like Dropbox for code, but you tell git when you want it to get the latest changes from the remote when it is most convenient for you. In this lesson, we use git pull and discuss how it is a shortcut for running git fetch and git merge.
[00:00] We're inside of a directory called utilityfunctions, which is a Git repo. One of our coworkers has been working on a new license for our project, but if we take a look at the project contents, we don't see it here. So, let's run the git-pull command. Now we have the latest changes from other developers on the same project.
[00:20] Inside of the output of the git-pull command, we can see exactly what was changed. It looks like a new file, license.md was added, and the README file was changed. Now, if we output our directory contents, we can see the new file here, license.md.
[00:36] Let's review what happened here. First, we went into our git repo. We have our normal files that we were working with. Then, when we run the git-pull command, it pulls in the changes from the remote repo that other developers have added.
[00:52] The git-pull command is actually a shortcut for two other commands that we can run individually if we want. The first is git-fetch, which tells our local repo to grab the latest changes from the remote repo, and store them locally, but don't actually include them in our local code just yet.
[01:08] The second is the git-merge command, which tells our local repo to merge in the changes that we got from the git-fetch into our actual code.
[01:18] Once again, when we run git-pull, it's the same thing as running git-fetch git-merge. Often, when you want the changes from other developers on your project, all you need to do is run git-pull. This will fetch and merge the changes from the remote repo into your local repo.