Can “git pull --all” update all my local branches?

Question

I often have at least 3 remote branches: master, staging and production. I have 3 local branches that track those remote branches.

Updating all my local branches is

Answer 1

I know this question is almost 3 years old, but I asked myself the very same question and did not found any ready made solution. So, I created a custom git command shell script my self.

Here it goes, the git-ffwd-update script does the following...

1. it issues a git remote update to fetch the lates revs
2. then uses git remote show to get a list of local branches that track a remote branch (e.g. branches that can be used with git pull)
3. then it checks with git rev-list --count .. how many commit the local branch is behind the remote (and ahead vice versa)
4. if the local branch is 1 or more commits ahead, it can NOT be fast-forwarded and needs to be merged or rebased by hand
5. if the local branch is 0 commits ahead and 1 or more commits behind, it can be fast-forwarded by git branch -f -t

the script can be called like:

$ git ffwd-update
Fetching origin
 branch bigcouch was 10 commit(s) behind of origin/bigcouch. resetting local branch to remote
 branch develop was 3 commit(s) behind of origin/develop. resetting local branch to remote
 branch master is 6 commit(s) behind and 1 commit(s) ahead of origin/master. could not be fast-forwarded

The full script, should be saved as git-ffwd-update and needs to be on the PATH.

#!/bin/bash

main() {
  REMOTES="$@";
  if [ -z "$REMOTES" ]; then
    REMOTES=$(git remote);
  fi
  REMOTES=$(echo "$REMOTES" | xargs -n1 echo)
  CLB=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD);
  echo "$REMOTES" | while read REMOTE; do
    git remote update $REMOTE
    git remote show $REMOTE -n \
    | awk '/merges with remote/{print $5" "$1}' \
    | while read RB LB; do
      ARB="refs/remotes/$REMOTE/$RB";
      ALB="refs/heads/$LB";
      NBEHIND=$(( $(git rev-list --count $ALB..$ARB 2>/dev/null) +0));
      NAHEAD=$(( $(git rev-list --count $ARB..$ALB 2>/dev/null) +0));
      if [ "$NBEHIND" -gt 0 ]; then
        if [ "$NAHEAD" -gt 0 ]; then
          echo " branch $LB is $NBEHIND commit(s) behind and $NAHEAD commit(s) ahead of $REMOTE/$RB. could not be fast-forwarded";
        elif [ "$LB" = "$CLB" ]; then
          echo " branch $LB was $NBEHIND commit(s) behind of $REMOTE/$RB. fast-forward merge";
          git merge -q $ARB;
        else
          echo " branch $LB was $NBEHIND commit(s) behind of $REMOTE/$RB. resetting local branch to remote";
          git branch -f $LB -t $ARB >/dev/null;
        fi
      fi
    done
  done
}

main $@