git pull based on SHA

Question

I would like to know how to do a pull from repo based on a SHA?

git pull origin master

the above code will pull master once we've done git add remote.

Answer 1

A git pull does two things for you:

1. Fetches a specific branch from the repository
2. Merges it with your current branch.

It sounds like what you want to do is to get a specific revision from the repository and merge it with your current branch.

The best way to do this is two commands:

git fetch origin
git merge YOUR_SHA_HERE

If what you want is just to see what's in a specific revision from the repository and make it the working tree, but not do a merge, then you would want:

git fetch origin
git checkout YOUR_SHA_HERE

If what you want is to get the specific version, and make it the new "master" (or another branch), then you would want to run

git fetch origin
git reset --hard YOUR_SHA_HERE

All of these will fetch new code from the repository (via the 'git fetch origin'), but then there are different ways to combine with / replace your current code.

Answer 2

I don't think there's a way to pull just part of a branch based on a SHA.

What's wrong with:

git pull
git reset --hard <sha>