I've set up tracking branches with the --track
option, and when I do a git pull
on master
, it fetches all branches to origin/branchname
but doesn't merge with the local tracking branches. This is extra annoying, because if I later do a git push
on master
, it says that non-fast-forward updates were rejected on the tracking branches, since they weren't fast-forwarded on the initial git pull
.
My question is: How do I make it so that git pull
with fetch all branches and automatically fast-forward all the tracking branches?
Note: git pull
used to fast-forward all my tracking branches with my GitHub repos, but now that I've set up my own repos using Gitolite, this problem is cropping up.
But wait:
- git won't merge (the second step of
git pull
after the fetch
part) files unless the branch is checked out first. See "Can “git pull --all
” update all my local branches?"
git pull
on master
will merge files on master
, meaning the next push will be a fast-forward one. A non fast-forward can only occur if a push to the remote master
from another repo has been done prior to your push.
Note: I suppose you have tracked all your remote branches as in "Track all remote git branches as local branches."
Note: Git 2.0 (Q2 2014) will introduce with commit b814da8 a config push.ff:
pull.ff::
By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when merging a commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, the tip of the current branch is fast-forwarded.
- When set to
false
, this variable tells Git to create an extra merge commit in such a case (equivalent to giving the --no-ff
option from the command line).
- When set to
only
, only such fast-forward merges are allowed (equivalent to giving the --ff-only
option from the command line).
Shell script that fast-forwards all branches that have their upstream branch set to the matching origin/ branch without doing any checkouts
it doesn't change your current branch at any time, no need to deal with working copy changes and time lost checking out
it only does fast-forwards, branches that cannot be fast-forwarded will show an error message and will be skipped
Make sure all your branches' upstream branches are set correctly by running git branch -vv
. Set the upstream branch with git branch -u origin/yourbanchname
Copy-paste into a file and chmod 755:
#!/bin/sh
curbranch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
for branch in $(git for-each-ref refs/heads --format="%(refname:short)"); do
upbranch=$(git config --get branch.$branch.merge | sed 's:refs/heads/::');
if [ "$branch" = "$upbranch" ]; then
if [ "$branch" = "$curbranch" ]; then
echo Fast forwarding current branch $curbranch
git merge --ff-only origin/$upbranch
else
echo Fast forwarding $branch with origin/$upbranch
git fetch . origin/$upbranch:$branch
fi
fi
done;
If you really want to fast forward all local branches that are tracking remote branches you might want to consider adding this as an alias to your ~/.gitconfig
:
[alias]
pull-all = !"for b in $(git for-each-ref refs/heads --format='%(refname)') ; do git checkout ${b#refs/heads/} ; git pull --ff-only ; done"
You can then run git pull-all
, it will iterate through your local branches and run a git pull --ff-only
on each.
SmartGit, for example, has an option to automatically merge changes from the tracked branch if you switch to a branch. This should do what you want to achieve.