git pull merges current branch even when <dst> is specified

> 
> If I am in 'master' and 'bugfix' is a remote branch in 'repo' which I do not
> have locally yet, running:
> 
> git pull repo bugfix:bugfix
> 
> creates a new local branch 'bugfix' equals to 'repo/bugfix' as expected.
> However, it also merges 'bugfix' into 'master', that surprises me since I
> explicitly specify that <dst> is 'bugfix'.
> 
> I know that I can get what I want by running:
> 
> git fetch repo bugfix:bugfix
> 
> But the git-pull behavior looks odd to me. I thought that <dst> was the
> current branch by default and it could be overridden by specifying it in the
> command line.

> Tom Lambda venit, vidit, dixit 24.06.2009 18:47:
> > 
> > If I am in 'master' and 'bugfix' is a remote branch in 'repo' which I do not
> > have locally yet, running:
> > 
> > git pull repo bugfix:bugfix
> > 
> > creates a new local branch 'bugfix' equals to 'repo/bugfix' as expected.
> > However, it also merges 'bugfix' into 'master', that surprises me since I
> > explicitly specify that <dst> is 'bugfix'.
> > 
> > I know that I can get what I want by running:
> > 
> > git fetch repo bugfix:bugfix
> > 
> > But the git-pull behavior looks odd to me. I thought that <dst> was the
> > current branch by default and it could be overridden by specifying it in the
> > command line.
> 
> Well, the first line of git-pull's man page says:
> 
> Runs git-fetch with the given parameters, and calls git-merge to merge
> the retrieved head(s) into the current branch.

> 
> 
> To explain why this is so: Merging is an operation that requires a working 
> directory, as merge conflicts can happen.  That is why merging is only 
> possible locally, and only into the current branch.
> 
>