Re: Your branch and 'origin/master' have diverged

> Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 14 August 2012 10:19, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>> Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 14 August 2012 01:27, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>>> [git pull with two args] it's ok if you use it with an URL instead
>>>>> of a remote nickname
>>>>
>>>> Why would that be okay? What is the difference? Isn't the nickname
>>>> just an alias for a URL?
>>>
>>> As long as you tell what refspecs to use on the command line, the
>>> remote nickname behaves as "just an alias for a URL", so yes,
>>> because Thomas is discussing "two-arg pull or fetch", one arg being
>>> either nickname or URL and the other is an explicit refspec on the
>>> command line, it would be okay because there is no difference in
>>> that case.
>>
>> I suppose I'm not entirely clear on how this two step process is
>> "safer". Doing "git fetch" would seem to be harmless, right? So the
>> problem is with "git merge" but master should always be "behind"
>> origin/master so that "git merge" should just FF to origin/master
>> which *should* be completely safe. Does that make sense? Especially
>> given our use of master as an integration branch?
>>
>> [Given the trouble I have with getting people to use Git properly, I
>> prefer things as simple as possible. :-) ]
>
> I meant something else than Junio hinted at.  Saying
>
>   git fetch origin master
>   # or by extension
>   git pull origin master
>
> does not update the origin/* namespace, not even origin/master.  All
> fetching happens only into FETCH_HEAD.  This leads to confusion such as
> yours because origin/master and thus the upstream tracking displays will
> not know about the change.