Git: Merge a Remote branch locally
I've pulled all remote branches via git fetch --all
. I can see the branch I'd like to merge via git branch -a
as remotes/origin/branchname. Problem is it is not accessible. I can't merge or checkout.
You can reference those remote tracking branches ~(listed with git branch -r
) with the name of their remote.
You need to fetch the remote branch:
git fetch origin aRemoteBranch
If you want to merge one of those remote branches on your local branch:
git checkout aLocalBranch
git merge origin/aRemoteBranch
Note 1: For a large repo with a long history, you will want to add the --depth=1
option when you use git fetch
.
Note 2: These commands also work with other remote repos so you can setup an origin
and an upstream
if you are working on a fork.
Note 3: user3265569 suggests the following alias in the comments:
From
aLocalBranch
, rungit combine remoteBranch
Alias:combine = !git fetch origin ${1} && git merge origin/${1}
Opposite scenario: If you want to merge one of your local branch on a remote branch (as opposed to a remote branch to a local one, as shown above), you need to create a new local branch on top of said remote branch first:
git checkout -b myBranch origin/aBranch
git merge anotherLocalBranch
The idea here, is to merge "one of your local branch" (here anotherLocalBranch
) to a remote branch (origin/aBranch
).
For that, you create first "myBranch
" as representing that remote branch: that is the git checkout -b myBranch origin/aBranch
part.
And then you can merge anotherLocalBranch
to it (to myBranch
).
Whenever I do a merge, I get into the branch I want to merge into (e.g. "git checkout branch-i-am-working-in
") and then do the following:
git merge origin/branch-i-want-to-merge-from