This command degenerates to download everything to complete the asked refs from the remote side when the local side does not have a common ancestor commit.

-q

Pass -q flag to git-unpack-objects; this makes the cloning process less verbose.

-k

Do not invoke git-unpack-objects on received data, but create a single packfile out of it instead, and store it in the object database. If provided twice then the pack is locked against repacking.

--exec=<git-upload-pack>

Use this to specify the path to git-upload-pack on the remote side, if is not found on your $PATH. Installations of sshd ignores the user's environment setup scripts for login shells (e.g. .bash_profile) and your privately installed git may not be found on the system default $PATH. Another workaround suggested is to set up your $PATH in ".bashrc", but this flag is for people who do not want to pay the overhead for non-interactive shells by having a lean .bashrc file (they set most of the things up in .bash_profile).

<host>

A remote host that houses the repository. When this part is specified, git-upload-pack is invoked via ssh.

<directory>

The repository to sync from.

<refs>The remote heads to update from. This is relative to $GIT_DIR (e.g. "HEAD", "refs/heads/master"). When unspecified, update from all heads the remote side has.