With --no-commit perform the merge and stop just before creating a merge commit, to give the user a chance to inspect and further tweak the merge result before committing.

Note that fast-forward updates do not create a merge commit and therefore there is no way to stop those merges with --no-commit. Thus, if you want to ensure your branch is not changed or updated by the merge command, use --no-ff with --no-commit.

Older scripts may depend on the historical behaviour of not allowing the user to edit the merge log message. They will see an editor opened when they run git merge. To make it easier to adjust such scripts to the updated behaviour, the environment variable GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT can be set to no at the beginning of them.

With --ff, when possible resolve the merge as a fast-forward (only update the branch pointer to match the merged branch; do not create a merge commit). When not possible (when the merged-in history is not a descendant of the current history), create a merge commit.

With --no-ff, create a merge commit in all cases, even when the merge could instead be resolved as a fast-forward.

With --no-log do not list one-line descriptions from the actual commits being merged.

The --no-signoff option can be used to countermand an earlier --signoff option on the command line.

With -n or --no-stat do not show a diffstat at the end of the merge.

With --no-squash perform the merge and commit the result. This option can be used to override --squash.

With --squash, --commit is not allowed, and will fail.

Only useful when merging.

Only useful when merging.

Only useful when merging.

When set to merges, rebase using git rebase --rebase-merges so that the local merge commits are included in the rebase (see git-rebase(1) for details).

When false, merge the upstream branch into the current branch.

When interactive, enable the interactive mode of rebase.

See pull.rebase, branch.<name>.rebase and branch.autoSetupRebase in git-config(1) if you want to make git pull always use --rebase instead of merging.

If the source repository is shallow, fetch as much as possible so that the current repository has the same history as the source repository.

This option may be specified more than once; if so, Git will report commits reachable from any of the given commits.

The argument to this option may be a glob on ref names, a ref, or the (possibly abbreviated) SHA-1 of a commit. Specifying a glob is equivalent to specifying this option multiple times, one for each matching ref name.

See also the fetch.negotiationAlgorithm and push.negotiate configuration variables documented in git-config(1), and the --negotiate-only option below.

Internally this is used to implement the push.negotiate option, see git-config(1).

If the --multiple option was specified, the different remotes will be fetched in parallel. If multiple submodules are fetched, they will be fetched in parallel. To control them independently, use the config settings fetch.parallel and submodule.fetchJobs (see git-config(1)).

Typically, parallel recursive and multi-remote fetches will be faster. By default fetches are performed sequentially, not in parallel.

The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +, followed by the source <src>, followed by a colon :, followed by the destination ref <dst>. The colon can be omitted when <dst> is empty. <src> is typically a ref, but it can also be a fully spelled hex object name.

A <refspec> may contain a * in its <src> to indicate a simple pattern match. Such a refspec functions like a glob that matches any ref with the same prefix. A pattern <refspec> must have a * in both the <src> and <dst>. It will map refs to the destination by replacing the * with the contents matched from the source.

If a refspec is prefixed by ^, it will be interpreted as a negative refspec. Rather than specifying which refs to fetch or which local refs to update, such a refspec will instead specify refs to exclude. A ref will be considered to match if it matches at least one positive refspec, and does not match any negative refspec. Negative refspecs can be useful to restrict the scope of a pattern refspec so that it will not include specific refs. Negative refspecs can themselves be pattern refspecs. However, they may only contain a <src> and do not specify a <dst>. Fully spelled out hex object names are also not supported.

tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>; it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.

The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched, and if <dst> is not an empty string, an attempt is made to update the local ref that matches it.

Whether that update is allowed without --force depends on the ref namespace it’s being fetched to, the type of object being fetched, and whether the update is considered to be a fast-forward. Generally, the same rules apply for fetching as when pushing, see the <refspec>... section of git-push(1) for what those are. Exceptions to those rules particular to git fetch are noted below.

Until Git version 2.20, and unlike when pushing with git-push(1), any updates to refs/tags/* would be accepted without + in the refspec (or --force). When fetching, we promiscuously considered all tag updates from a remote to be forced fetches. Since Git version 2.20, fetching to update refs/tags/* works the same way as when pushing. I.e. any updates will be rejected without + in the refspec (or --force).

Unlike when pushing with git-push(1), any updates outside of refs/{tags,heads}/* will be accepted without + in the refspec (or --force), whether that’s swapping e.g. a tree object for a blob, or a commit for another commit that’s doesn’t have the previous commit as an ancestor etc.

Unlike when pushing with git-push(1), there is no configuration which’ll amend these rules, and nothing like a pre-fetch hook analogous to the pre-receive hook.

As with pushing with git-push(1), all of the rules described above about what’s not allowed as an update can be overridden by adding an the optional leading + to a refspec (or using --force command line option). The only exception to this is that no amount of forcing will make the refs/heads/* namespace accept a non-commit object.

        [remote "<name>"]
                url = <URL>
                pushurl = <pushurl>
                push = <refspec>
                fetch = <refspec>

        URL: one of the above URL format
        Push: <refspec>
        Pull: <refspec>

        <URL>#<head>

        refs/heads/<head>:refs/heads/<branch>

        HEAD:refs/heads/<head>