Qn about git pull and git fetch

Hi everyone,

This is my first post to the list. I am a new (few months now) git user and I use it for source code and notes for my research projects. I noticed something during the course of my use. If I have a remote tracking repository, and I do a `git pull origin master', the latest changes are merged into my currently checked out branch. But the references to the remote repo are not. So when I fire up gitk like this, `gitk --all &' I don't see the latest commits for origin/master. I have to manually run `git fetch origin' or `git remote update origin' to see the updated commits in gitk.

This is not an inconvenience for me, just a little puzzling since the man page says git pull runs `git fetch' followed by `git mege'. Just out of curiosity, is there any reason for this choice?