Re: Cloning into an existing, non-empty directory?

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 25, 2011, 08:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20110425075750.GA28172@elie>
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTinV4cFC5vzr25V-D3PMwWx284zgoQ@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

Richard Hartmann wrote:

> I think I reduced the test-case as much as I can

All right, sorry to be so dense.  I tried:

	git init test && cd test
	git remote add origin ~/src/some-repo
	git fetch origin

and then:

	$ git merge origin
	fatal: origin - not something we can merge

Is this what you mean? "git merge" is not advertised as taking the name of a remote repository as a parameter. The usual usage is instead to pass a commit, as in "git merge origin/master".

I'm not sure what a good meaning for "git merge <repository>" would be. "git pull <repository>" does "git fetch <repository>" and then, if one of the fetched branches from <repository> is the configured upstream for the current branch, merges it.

Ideas? Probably the documentation or error message could use help from someone less blind to see what a first-time reader would see.

Regards, Jonathan