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I'm very new to git and I can't seem to get a solid answer. Im running a git pull and I see this;

[user@my_vm]$ git pull
Already up to date.

What exactly is 'already up to date' ? What is being updated? Are the files in the repository getting updated? For instance, if I have /home/user/public_html/index.php and a git repo is located in /home/user/repo.git then does running git pull update the index file thats in the git repo or in public_html?

AD7six
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Scivic
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  • There are more misunderstandings/questions here - but “what files are up to date?” Is answered by: [How can I make git show a list of the files that are being tracked?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15606955/how-can-i-make-git-show-a-list-of-the-files-that-are-being-tracked) – AD7six Mar 22 '23 at 22:40

3 Answers3

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When you run git pull, and get up to date it means that the folder you are currently in is linked to a repository and is all up to date with the latest code. (This includes subfolders and files in this folder)

According to the example you gave, git pull would update the index file in public_html folder.

To find out the root directory that is linked to the repository :

git rev-parse --show-toplevel

Rokal
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  • That doesn't seem to work. If I go into, another example, a wordpress directory; /home/user/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/themes/random_theme/ and run git pull from the random_theme dir will content in random_theme be updated in /home/user/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/themes/random_theme or will it update in /home/user/repo.git/wordpress/wp-content/themes/random_theme/ I'm not able to find a definitive answer to this. – Scivic Mar 22 '23 at 21:00
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First, a note on file locations:

For instance, if I have /home/user/public_html/index.php and a git repo is located in /home/user/repo.git

This would be an unusual file layout. By default, every time you run git clone you get two things:

  • A checked out copy of all the files in a particular revision of the history; this might include files like "index.php" and "favicon.ico". This is known as the "working tree".
  • A directory containing all the settings and version database, inside that directory. This directory is named .git (the . there is not marking the file type, like in the MS-DOS/Windows convention, it's a leading dot meaning "hide from lists by default" in a Unix/Linux convention). This is what is mostly meant by "the repository".

Similarly, if you run git init in an existing directory, it will by default create a .git directory inside that directory.

So, if you have set up the directory /home/user/public_html as a git working tree, your repository data will generally be in /home/user/public_html/.git

Second, notice that I used the word "database" when describing the .git directory. That directory probably does not contain any files called "index.php". What it contains is enough data to reconstruct any version of that file that's in any branch of your git history.

Also contained in that directory is information about what version you currently have checked out in the working tree - what named local branch have you selected, what revision does that currently point to, and what do the files look like in that revision.

That's how git knows what changes you've made locally, for instance - it compares each file in the working tree with its knowledge of the currently checked out revision.

Before we get to git pull, we need to understand git fetch, because as discussed elsewhere, a git pull is essentially a git fetch followed by either a git merge or git rebase.

In git, any repository can track changes from any other - often, we have one local repository and one on GitHub / GitLab / etc, but git is not limited to that model. The way this works is that you "fetch" data from another repository (termed a "remote"), about its branches, commit history, and the content of those commits.

That data is then added to your local database (in the .git directory) as a bunch of extra branches - the remote server's main branch is kept separate from the local main branch, for instance.

When you run git pull, all of that happens, and then git compares the local branch you have checked out with one it fetched from the remote repository (by default, the one with the same name).

If the two branches it's comparing are pointing at different commits, then it will either (depending on various options):

  • "fast-forward" the local branch to the same commit as the remote branch
  • "merge" the two branches, creating a new commit which ties the two histories together
  • "rebase" your current branch, recreating your local commits as though the full remote history had been there before you started

The result will be written to the working directory, and also into the local history database, as the new history for the current branch. All of this happens primarily at the level of commits, but every commit describes the content of every versioned file.

So...

What exactly is 'already up to date' ?

That message means "the remote branch you asked to synchronise with is the same as the local branch you have checked out, so there's nothing more to do".

It doesn't matter if you have local commits which are not on the remote repository, or even changes you haven't committed yet, only that your local branch history already contains everything the remote branch history contains.

does running git pull update the index file that's in the git repo or in public_html?

Both (sort of).

If there are changes that need to be pulled in to the current branch, git will calculate what the new history of the branch should be (using a fast-forward, a merge commit, or a rebase), and store it in the history database in the .git directory. That includes what the content of "index.php" should be at the new tip of your branch.

Once it has worked that out, it will also update your working copy - the actual file "public_html/index.php" - so that it matches that updated local branch.

IMSoP
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  • I think this is the answer I was looking for! "Similarly, if you run git init in an existing directory, it will by default create a .git directory inside that directory. So, if you have set up the directory /home/user/public_html as a git working tree, your repository data will generally be in /home/user/public_html/.git " I think this is the answer! Let me try this out – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 00:37
  • So I have /home/user/wordpress/index.php I have a .git in /home/user/wordpress/ I modified the index.php file, ran a git pull but the index file remain unchanged. Shouldn't it update it when running the git pull? – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 00:44
  • Where did you modify it? Remember git pull isn't about discarding any local changes, it's about incorporating changes from the remote repository - its main real-life use case is that *someone else* has made some changes, and you want to include those changes *as well as yours*. – IMSoP Mar 23 '23 at 07:25
  • I'm not making any changes directly. Only thing I'm doing is running a git pull. But after that what do I do next? How do the files of the live site get populated if I have no updated files after a git pull? – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 14:32
  • I don't understand. If you haven't made any changes anywhere, why do you expect anything to change? Do you mean that somebody *else* has changed something? What, and where? – IMSoP Mar 23 '23 at 14:34
  • What I mean is that the changes were made at the devs repo and I ran a git pull to update the local repos on my VM. I see that the logs state there were updates downloaded. But I don't see anything thats been updated as to what files. – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 17:13
  • I think at this point it might be good to start a new question, explaining your specific situation more clearly, because we're getting a long way from the hypothetical scenario in your original question. You need to be much clearer about who "the devs" are, how you created this repo, where you are looking at "the logs", and what change you're expecting to see when you run `git pull`. It's also relevant to mention that *git is not a deployment tool*, it is a *development* tool; so talk of "updating the live site" makes me wonder what workflow you're actually attempting here. – IMSoP Mar 23 '23 at 17:23
  • Fair enough. I think I'm poorly explaining it. We can retire this post. – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 23:37
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git pull's job is to pull all commits from upstream into your local branch.

"Already up to date." refers to that and only that, therefore it means:

  • During fetch of HEAD@{upstream} (local branch's upstream branch), no new commits where found
  • and: All commits of HEAD@{upstream} are already part of local branch => no merge/fast-forward/rebase needed
  • As a result, git pull did not change anything on your local branch nor your working directory. (And it will never chance anything in the remote repo)

What it does NOT mean:

  • Local branch has no new/unpushed commits
  • Staging area has no changes
  • Working directory has no changes
Jay
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  • I understand that and understand how git pull typically works. But the question is how do I implement those changes to the files on the live site? There is nothing to copy because I'm only seeing logs of meta data being updated but no specific files. How do I apply those changes? – Scivic Mar 23 '23 at 14:33