Implement auto-fetch similar to VSCode

[vogella]

Description

The "auto fetch" feature in VS Code (specifically in its built-in Git integration) periodically runs git fetch in the background to keep your local repository up to date with the remote.
Here's how it works:

Setting: It's controlled by git.autofetch, which you can find in Settings (Ctrl/Cmd + ,).
It has three values:

false (default) — disabled
true — periodically fetches from all remotes
"all" — fetches from all remotes (same as true in recent versions)

Behavior: When enabled, VS Code runs git fetch automatically at a regular interval (default is every 3 minutes). You can customize the interval with the git.autofetchPeriod setting (value in seconds).
What it does in practice:

Updates your remote tracking branches (e.g., origin/main) so you can see if you're behind the remote.
The Source Control status bar indicator will show incoming/outgoing commits, letting you know when there are changes to pull.
It does not automatically merge or pull — your working tree stays untouched. It only fetches metadata.

Egit should offer similar functionality. Fetch is save to do and we can save time. If the background fetch is done, no popup or dialog should be shown to the user.

Motivation

Egit should offer similar functionality. Fetch is save to do and we can save time. If the background fetch is done, no popup or dialog should be shown to the user.

Alternatives considered

Cron Job

Additional context

No response

[msohn]

Git provides the maintenance prefetch job to automate that, see https://git-scm.com/docs/git-maintenance#Documentation/git-maintenance.txt-prefetch.

To address your enhancement proposal I propose to implement maintenance prefetch in JGit and then EGit can use that.

[vogella]

I was thinking about something like this.

   try {                                                                                                                                                                                         │
                    List<RemoteConfig> remotes =                                                                                                                                                              
                         RemoteConfig.getAllRemoteConfigs(repo.getConfig());                                                                                                                                   
                     for (RemoteConfig remote : remotes) {                                                                                                                                                     
                         if (remote.getURIs().isEmpty()) continue;                                                                                                                                             
                         FetchOperation op = new FetchOperation(repo, remote,                                                                                                                                  
                                 GitSettings.getRemoteConnectionTimeout(), false);                                                                                                                             
                         op.setCredentialsProvider(new EGitCredentialsProvider());                                                                                                                             
                         op.run(progress.newChild(0));                                                                                                                                                         
                     }                                                                                                                                                                                         │
                 } catch (Exception e) {                                   

This would work without any additional JGit requirement. I scanned through the https://git-scm.com/docs/git-maintenance#Documentation/git-maintenance.txt-prefetch documentation and it looks like this is another feature, making in general Git operations faster and better which is valuable but IMHO not closely related to this requirement.

[vogella]

https://review.gerrithub.io/c/eclipse-egit/egit/+/1232425

[vogella]