CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitbranchfetchpull
Kosm
Kosm

Reputation: 3

Updating a git branch that was created from a branch other than master

I've been working on a feature for a project on a branch that was created from master, which is currently in review for merging. I'll call it dev. In the meantime, I created a branch out of dev which I'll call branch.

While in review, dev was found to need some changes, so I checked dev back out, made the changes, and recommitted and pushed.

Now my copy of branch is out of date with its source, dev. How do I update it? Normally, I would just do a fetch, followed by a pull. When master has changes, doing this causes my branch to pull in said changes, allowing me to stay up to date with the work of my peers. When I try to do this between my own branches, it says branch is up-to-date, which is incorrect.

What am I missing?

Thanks.

EDIT: I ended up doing a rebase as Max Friederichs describes below. It does what I specified in terms of updating branch with the changes from dev. The reason I selected Jean Rostan's answer is because doing a rebase changes the workflow history of the git repository, but doing a merge as Jean suggested merges in the new stuff from the branch and leaves the workflow history alone -- good for when you want to see what happened when.

In reality, both solutions achieve the same thing, just with different effects on the workflow history.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 885

Answers (2)

Jean Rostan
Jean Rostan

Reputation: 1146

If it's local branches only (which is your case), start by going on the branch you want to update:

git checkout branch

Then merge local changes from the target branch:

git merge dev

and it will merge dev into branch, that is to say update it.

When you do a pull, you retrieve upstream changes (in your remote repo); thus no changes are found if no changes were made on the branch branch in your remote repo.

Upvotes: 2

Max Friederichs
Max Friederichs

Reputation: 599

You need to rebase your branch ... branch so that it includes the latest changes you made to the dev branch

git checkout branch
git rebase dev

This will momentarily put aside your changes on branch, apply missing changes from dev, then re apply your changes to branch. Any conflicts need to be addressed at this time as well. You will need to force push if branch was previously pushed.

Upvotes: 2

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