git pull: get the team's work

You are not alone on the project. While you worked, a teammate committed and pushed — their photographs are on the remote, and your copy does not have them yet. git pull brings you up to date: it downloads the new commits and merges them into your branch, in one command.

Under the hood pull is really two commands wearing one name: fetch, which downloads; and merge, which combines. You will hear both words. For daily life, pull is the whole story.

The output has two halves. The From https://... block is the download — git naming the remote and listing what arrived, with the old and new positions of the branch. The Updating block is the merge — your branch moving forward to include the new work, announced by Fast-forward when it slid in cleanly.

When it does not slide in cleanly — when their changes and yours touch the same lines — pull raises exactly the conflict you already know from course 18. Same markers, same resolution: edit, add, commit. Nothing new to learn; the skill transfers whole.

The professional loop grows one step at each end: pull at the start — get everyone's work so you build on the latest truth; work in the middle, exactly as you have learned; push at the end — hand your work back. Pull, work, push. When several people share a branch, the habit is to pull often, so the gaps between your copy and the shared truth stay small.