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Remotes, Fetch, Pull, Push and Tags

Remotes are named URLs, and remote-tracking branches like origin/main are your local cache of where the remote's branches were at your last fetch. Fetch downloads, pull integrates, push uploads, and tags travel only when you ask.

Key points

1
git fetch updates origin/* refs only; your branches, index and files never change. git pull is fetch plus merge (or rebase).
2
Remote-tracking refs change only on fetch, pull or push, so git status ahead/behind counts are as stale as your last fetch.
3
A push must be a fast-forward of the remote branch; "rejected (fetch first)" means someone pushed first, so fetch and integrate before pushing again.
4
With push.default = simple, a branch without an upstream needs git push -u origin <branch>, or set push.autoSetupRemote = true.
5
Tags are not pushed by default: use git push origin <tag>, --follow-tags (annotated, reachable) or --tags (all). git describe uses annotated tags unless you pass --tags.
6
Deleted remote branches linger locally until git fetch --prune; tags need --prune-tags.
7
--depth implies --single-branch; partial clones (--filter=blob:none) keep full history and fetch file contents on demand.

Common traps

A plain git fetch never moves a tag you already have; moving a published tag silently leaves teammates on the old commit.
On Windows, Git for Windows' system config sets pull.rebase = false, so git pull merges where a clean Linux Git would stop and ask.
Fork pull requests don't get repository secrets in pull_request workflows, and GITHUB_TOKEN is read-only.

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