git fetch: how to ignore new branches

Question

I have several remotes added in my repository. I'm only intrested in their master branches, but if I run

git fetch --all

or

git remote update

then all their branches are fetched. Is it possible to set up git, so it fetches only changes on remotes' master branches and it doesn't create any new remote-tracking branches?

Answer 1

You can edit .git/config and change

fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

to, for example,

fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master

Also you can do git fetch origin +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master each time instead of just git fetch

You can create fetching script (like "gfm") to avoid inputting that string each time. This way you can use "gfm" to fetch just master and "git fetch" to fetch everything.