Git Version Control Cookbook - Second Edition

How to do it...

Here, we will try a few commands that assist you when you have a remote tracking branch:

1. Start by executing git status:

$ git status 

On branch remoteBugFix 
Your branch is behind 'origin/stable-3.2' by 9 commits, and can be fast-forwarded. 
  (use "git pull" to update your local branch) 

  nothing to commit, working directory clean 

Git is very descriptive when you have a tracking branch and you use git status.

As you can see from the message, you can use git pull to update your local branch, which we will try in the next example. The message says it can be fast-forwarded. It simply means that Git can advance the HEAD without merging. Now, we will just perform the merge:

The git pull command is just a git fetch command and then ...