git-lfs-fetch

Name

git-lfs-fetch — Download all Git LFS files for a given ref

Synopsis

git-lfs-fetch [OPTIONS] [ARGS]...

Description

Download all Git LFS files for a given ref

Download Git LFS objects at the given refs from the specified remote. See DEFAULT REMOTE and DEFAULT REFS for what happens if you don’t specify.

This does not update the working copy; use git-lfs-pull(1) to download and replace pointer text with object content, or git-lfs-checkout(1) to materialize already-downloaded objects.

Options

Arguments

<ARGS> Optional remote name followed by refs. The first positional argument is treated as a remote name when it resolves; any following arguments are refs to fetch

Flags

-I, --include <INCLUDE> Specify lfs.fetchinclude just for this invocation; see INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE
-X, --exclude <EXCLUDE> Specify lfs.fetchexclude just for this invocation; see INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE
-a, --all Download all objects that are referenced by any commit reachable from the refs provided as arguments.

If no refs are provided, then all refs are fetched. This is primarily for backup and migration purposes. Cannot be combined with --include/--exclude. Ignores any globally configured include and exclude paths to ensure that all objects are downloaded.
--stdin Read a list of newline-delimited refs from standard input instead of the command line
-p, --prune Prune old and unreferenced objects after fetching, equivalent to running git lfs prune afterwards. See git-lfs-prune(1) for more details
--refetch Also fetch objects that are already present locally.

Useful for recovery from a corrupt local store.
-d, --dry-run Print what would be fetched, without actually fetching anything
-r, --recent Also fetch recently-touched refs and the recent pre-images on each.

Walk every ref under refs/heads/ (and, by default, every remote-tracking ref) whose tip commit lies within lfs.fetchrecentrefsdays of today, and on each of those refs download the pre-image of every LFS file modified within lfs.fetchrecentcommitsdays. Combine with the named refs’ HEAD-state fetch. The same behaviour fires automatically if lfs.fetchrecentalways is set.
-j, --json Write the details of all object transfer requests as JSON to standard output.

Intended for interoperation with external tools. When --dry-run is also specified, writes the details of the transfers that would occur if the objects were fetched.

You can configure Git LFS to only fetch objects to satisfy references in certain paths of the repo, and/or to exclude certain paths of the repo, to reduce the time you spend downloading things you do not use.

In your Git configuration or in a .lfsconfig file, you may set either or both of lfs.fetchinclude and lfs.fetchexclude to comma-separated lists of paths. If lfs.fetchinclude is defined, Git LFS objects will only be fetched if their path matches one in that list, and if lfs.fetchexclude is defined, Git LFS objects will only be fetched if their path does not match one in that list. Paths are matched using wildcard matching as per gitignore(5).

Note that using the command-line options -I and -X override the respective configuration settings. Setting either option to an empty string clears the value.

Examples:

git config lfs.fetchinclude "textures,images/foo*": This will only fetch objects referenced in paths in the textures folder, and files called foo* in the images folder.
git config lfs.fetchinclude "*.jpg,*.png,*.tga": Only fetch JPG/PNG/TGA files, wherever they are in the repository.
git config lfs.fetchexclude "media/reallybigfiles": Don’t fetch any LFS objects referenced in the folder media/reallybigfiles, but fetch everything else.
git config lfs.fetchinclude "media" git config lfs.fetchexclude "media/excessive": Only fetch LFS objects in the media folder, but exclude those in one of its subfolders.

Default remote

Without arguments, fetch downloads from the default remote. The default remote is the same as for git fetch, i.e. based on the remote branch you’re tracking first, or origin otherwise.

Default refs

If no refs are given as arguments, the currently checked out ref is used. With --recent (or lfs.fetchrecentalways=true), recently-touched refs and commits are also fetched — see RECENT CHANGES.

Recent changes

With --recent (or lfs.fetchrecentalways=true), fetch downloads objects from recently-active refs and commits in addition to the ones the named refs ask for. The idea is to pre-populate the cache so a later checkout or diff of “what we were working on last week” doesn’t trigger another download round-trip.

What counts as ‘recent’ is controlled by these gitconfig keys:

lfs.fetchrecentrefsdays: include branches whose tip commit is within this many days of now. Only local refs are scanned unless lfs.fetchrecentremoterefs is also set. Default 7.
lfs.fetchrecentremoterefs: also scan the remote-tracking refs of the remote being fetched. Useful for picking up branches you might check out later without first creating a tracking local ref. Default true.
lfs.fetchrecentcommitsdays: in addition to fetching the tip state of each recent ref, also fetch any LFS object referenced by commits within this many days of that ref’s tip. Default 0 (tip only).
lfs.fetchrecentalways: when true, always behave as if --recent was passed. Default false.

Examples

Fetch the LFS objects for the current ref from the default remote:

git lfs fetch

Fetch the LFS objects for the current ref AND recent changes from the default remote (see RECENT CHANGES):

git lfs fetch --recent

Fetch the LFS objects for the current ref from a secondary remote upstream:

git lfs fetch upstream

Fetch all the LFS objects from the default remote that are referenced by any commit in the main and develop branches:

git lfs fetch --all origin main develop

Fetch the LFS objects for a branch from origin:

git lfs fetch origin mybranch

Fetch the LFS objects for two branches and a commit from origin:

git lfs fetch origin main mybranch e445b45c1c9c6282614f201b62778e4c0688b5c8

Reporting bugs

This command is from the Rust implementation of git-lfs, not the original Go implementation. Please report bugs to our issue tracker.

git-lfs