From: Jonathan Nieder Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:00:10 GMT Subject: Re: Cloning into an existing, non-empty directory? Message-ID: <20110425075750.GA28172@elie> In-Reply-To: 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 " would be. "git pull " does "git fetch " and then, if one of the fetched branches from 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