Merge, update, and pull Git branches without using

Question

I work on a project that has 2 branches, A and B. I typically work on branch A, and merge stuff from branch B. For the merging, I would typically do:

git merge origin/branchB

However, I would also like to keep a local copy of branch B, as I may occasionally check out the branch without first merging with my branch A. For this, I would do:

git checkout branchB
git pull
git checkout branchA

Is there a way to do the above in one command, and without having to switch branch back and forth? Should I be using git update-ref for that? How?

Answer 1

You can clone the repo and do the merge in the new repo. On the same filesystem, this will hardlink rather than copy most of the data. Finish by pulling the results into the original repo.

Answer 2

For many cases (such as merging), you can just use the remote branch without having to update the local tracking branch. Adding a message in the reflog sounds like overkill and will stop it being quicker. To make it easier to recover, add the following into your git config

[core]
    logallrefupdates=true

Then type

git reflog show mybranch

to see the recent history for your branch

Answer 3

The Short Answer

As long as you're doing a fast-forward merge, then you can simply use

git fetch <remote> <sourceBranch>:<destinationBranch>

Examples:

# Merge local branch foo into local branch master,
# without having to checkout master first.
# Here `.` means to use the local repository as the "remote":
git fetch . foo:master

# Merge remote branch origin/foo into local branch foo,
# without having to checkout foo first:
git fetch origin foo:foo

While Amber's answer will also work in fast-forward cases, using git fetch in this way instead is a little safer than just force-moving the branch reference, since git fetch will automatically prevent accidental non-fast-forwards as long as you don't use + in the refspec.

The Long Answer

You cannot merge a branch B into branch A without checking out A first if it would result in a non-fast-forward merge. This is because a working copy is needed to resolve any potential conflicts.

However, in the case of fast-forward merges, this is possible, because such merges can never result in conflicts, by definition. To do this without checking out a branch first, you can use git fetch with a refspec.

Here's an example of updating master (disallowing non-fast-forward changes) if you have another branch feature checked out:

git fetch upstream master:master

This use-case is so common, that you'll probably want to make an alias for it in your git configuration file, like this one:

[alias]
    sync = !sh -c 'git checkout --quiet HEAD; git fetch upstream master:master; git checkout --quiet -'

What this alias does is the following:

1. git checkout HEAD: this puts your working copy into a detached-head state. This is useful if you want to update master while you happen to have it checked-out. I think it was necessary to do with because otherwise the branch reference for master won't move, but I don't remember if that's really right off-the-top of my head.

2. git fetch upstream master:master: this fast-forwards your local master to the same place as upstream/master.

3. git checkout - checks out your previously checked-out branch (that's what the - does in this case).

The syntax of git fetch for (non-)fast-forward merges

If you want the fetch command to fail if the update is non-fast-forward, then you simply use a refspec of the form

git fetch <remote> <remoteBranch>:<localBranch>

If you want to allow non-fast-forward updates, then you add a + to the front of the refspec:

git fetch <remote> +<remoteBranch>:<localBranch>

Note that you can pass your local repo as the "remote" parameter using .:

git fetch . <sourceBranch>:<destinationBranch>

The Documentation

From the git fetch documentation that explains this syntax (emphasis mine):

<refspec>

The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus +, followed by the source ref <src>, followed by a colon :, followed by the destination ref <dst>.

The remote ref that matches <src> is fetched, and if <dst> is not empty string, the local ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using <src>. If the optional plus + is used, the local ref is updated even if it does not result in a fast-forward update.

See Also

1. Git checkout and merge without touching working tree

2. Merging without changing the working directory

Answer 4

Enter git-forward-merge:

Without needing to checkout destination, git-forward-merge <source> <destination> merges source into destination branch.

https://github.com/schuyler1d/git-forward-merge

Only works for automatic merges, if there are conflicts you need to use the regular merge.