Question

I’m working on a separate branch from the master branch, and I wondering what will happen if I pull the latest changes from Github. Should I pull from the master branch or the side branch? If I pull from the side branch, will it just merge the updates with my new code in the side branch?

Answer 1

You want to

1. fetch changes to origin/master
2. merge origin/master into your local master branch
3. merge your master branch into your feature branch

If your master hasn’t changed you should:

git checkout master
git pull # fetches (step 1) and merges (step 2)
git checkout <my branch>
git merge master # (step 3)

If your local master has changed, git pull may cause merge conflicts that you will have to resolve. If you want to keep your history clean, you might consider git pull --rebase and/or rebasing your feature branch onto the newly merged master once steps 1 and 2 are complete.