Fetch, pull, and push changes

The three commands have different effects:

Command	Downloads commits	Changes your current files	Uploads commits
`git fetch`	Yes	No	No
`git pull`	Yes	Usually yes	No
`git push`	No	No	Yes

Fetch without integrating

git fetch origin

Fetch updates remote-tracking branches such as origin/main. Inspect them before deciding how to integrate the changes:

git log --oneline main..origin/main

git pull --ff-only origin main

--ff-only allows only a fast-forward update. If local and remote history diverged, Git stops instead of creating an unexpected merge commit.

When you need to choose the integration method explicitly:

git fetch origin
git merge origin/main

git push origin main

Set tracking when publishing a new branch:

git push --set-upstream origin feature/<short-description>

The short -u option means --set-upstream. After tracking is configured, git push and git pull can often omit the remote and branch names.

Do not push blindly

Check git status --short --branch and git log --oneline --decorate -n 5 before pushing, especially after a rebase or remote update.