How to pull a remote branch

[weiqiyue]

Sorry, this is my first time using this plugin. There is a scenario where the current branch is in the local branch a, and I want to pull the code from the remote branch origin/b. When I right-click on origin/b, there is only fetch but no pull. Am I doing something wrong?

[ayushHardeniya]

You’re not doing anything wrong. GitLens (and VS Code’s Git UI in general) only shows Pull for the current tracked upstream branch.

If your local branch a is not tracking origin/b, GitLens can’t “pull” from it, so it only shows Fetch on that remote branch.

Git's rule is basically:

You can only pull from the branch your current branch is set to track.

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How to fix it

If you want to pull from origin/b while on local a, you need to set the upstream first:

git branch -u origin/b

or:

git pull origin b

After that, GitLens will recognize the relationship and the Pull action will appear for that branch.