What is the difference between pull and clone in git?

git clone pull
cmcculloh picture cmcculloh · Sep 1, 2010 · Viewed 208.5k times · Source

What is the difference between doing (after mkdir repo and cd repo):

git init
git remote add origin git://github.com/cmcculloh/repo.git
git fetch --all
git pull origin master

and

git clone git://github.com/cmcculloh/repo.git

I mean, obviously one is shorter, but other than that are they basically doing the same thing?

Answer

ebneter picture ebneter · Sep 2, 2010

git clone is how you get a local copy of an existing repository to work on. It's usually only used once for a given repository, unless you want to have multiple working copies of it around. (Or want to get a clean copy after messing up your local one...)

git pull (or git fetch + git merge) is how you update that local copy with new commits from the remote repository. If you are collaborating with others, it is a command that you will run frequently.

As your first example shows, it is possible to emulate git clone with an assortment of other git commands, but it's not really the case that git pull is doing "basically the same thing" as git clone (or vice-versa).

Related questions

Pull specific branch from git

I have a repo in bitbucket, and i am using git. So my branches are master develop_one develop_two When i use git clone [email protected]:project/project.git, i am getting only the master branch code, but …

Read More
GIT pulling or cloning repository only gets Master branch

I host on BitBucket when I git clone a repository or use git pull origin master and git pull origin myBranch it does pull second time, but when I list branches with git branch -v I only see master. Doing …

Read More
How to rebase local branch with remote master

I have a cloned project from a master branch from remote repository remote_repo. I create a new branch and I commit to that branch. Other programmers pushed to remote_repo to the master branch. I need now to rebase …

Read More