From: Geoff Russell Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:51:01 GMT Subject: Re: git pull question Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Bradley Wagner wrote: >> ... >> $ git checkout master >> $ git pull origin refs/heads/brA:brA >> >> The pull here seems to update both the current branch as well as brA? >> Is this intentional? > > I believe this is intentional. > > A git pull always pulls into (at least) the currently checked out > branch, in your case "master". By adding the param after the > colon in the you're saying to go ahead and fast-forward > merge the local branch called "brA" if possible. Okay. > However, I'm not entirely clear myself on the meaning of this note in > the documentation: > > Note > You never do your own development on branches that appear on the right > hand side of a colon on Pull: lines; they are to be updated > by git fetch. If you intend to do development derived from a remote > branch B, have a Pull: line to track it (i.e.  Pull: B:remote-B), and > have a separate branch my-B to do your development on top of it. The > latter is created by git branch my-B remote-B (or its equivalent git > checkout -b my-B remote-B). Run git fetch to keep track of the > progress of the remote side, and when you see something new on the > remote branch, merge it into your development branch with git pull . > remote-B, while you are on my-B branch. Yes, I was wondering about this ... I can't see any downside Geoff.