How to keep a git branch in sync with master

Question

At the moment git is doing my head in  I cannot come up with the best solution for the following   There are two branches  one called master and one called mobiledevicesupport  I want to keep mobiledevicesupport as a continuous branch that will be merged synced with the master branch whenever mobiledevicesupport is stable  This would merge changes from mobiledevicesupport into master but also bring all the changes from master into mobiledevicesupport so that branch can continue to be worked on and the features improved or amended  This needs to work with a central repository and multiple developers   Please an example of similar workflows other people use or just tell me if this idea is stupid and I should consider other options  At the moment the workflow seems sound  but I just don t know how I can make git work this way   Thanks  all help much appreciated   Update 1  If I was to merge master into mobiledevicesupport and mobiledevice support into master  do I get replicated commits across both branches  Or is git smart enough to work out that I have pulled the latest changes from branch A into branch B and add merge commit C to branch B  And I have pulled the latest changes from branch B into branch A and add merge commit D to branch A   I was going to post an image but I don t have enough reputation for it  so I guess the following illustration will have to do  Two branches continuously running with merges going both directions often  The key thing I am not sure about is how git will play out the commits and will it fill either branch with the commits from the other branch on merges or will it stay clean  I have used rebase before but it seems to end the branch and put all the commits into the master  or I did it wrong  Thanks for the help so far   master A--B--C-----H--I--J--M--N                   mobile             D--E--F--G--------K--L

User · Answer

Whenever you want to get the changes from master into your work branch, do a git rebase <remote>/master. If there are any conflicts. resolve them.

When your work branch is ready, rebase again and then do git push <remote> HEAD:master. This will update the master branch on remote (central repo).

User · Answer

The accepted answer via git merge will get the job done but leaves a messy commit hisotry  correct way should be  rebase  via the following steps assuming you want to keep your feature branch in sycn with develop before you do the final push before PR    1 git fetch from your feature branch  make sure the feature branch you are working on is update to date   2 git rebase origin develop  3 if any conflict shall arise  resolve them one by one  4 use git rebase --continue once all conflicts are dealt with  5 git push --force

User · Answer

Run the following commands    git checkout mobiledevice   git pull origin master   This would merge all the latest commits to your branch  If the merge results in some conflicts  you ll need to fix them  I don t know if this is the best practice but works for me

User · Answer

yes just do   git checkout master git pull git checkout mobiledevicesupport git merge master   to keep mobiledevicesupport in sync with master  then when you re ready to put mobiledevicesupport into master  first merge in master like above  then      git checkout master git merge mobiledevicesupport git push origin master   and thats it   the assumption here is that mobilexxx is a topic branch with work that isn t ready to go into your main branch yet  So only merge into master when mobiledevicesupport is in a good place

User · Answer

concept47 s approach is the right way to do it  but I d advise to merge with the --no-ff option in order to keep your commit history clear   git checkout develop git pull --rebase git checkout NewFeatureBranch git merge --no-ff master

User · Answer

Yeah I agree with your approach  To merge mobiledevicesupport into master you can use   git checkout master git pull origin master   Get all latest commits of master branch git merge mobiledevicesupport   Similarly you can also merge master in mobiledevicesupport   Q  If cross merging is an issue or not   A  Well it depends upon the commits made in mobile  branch and master branch from the last time they were synced  Take this example  After last sync  following commits happen to these branches  Master branch  A - gt  B - gt  C  where A B C are commits  Mobile branch  D - gt  E   Now  suppose commit B made some changes to file a txt and commit D also made some changes to a txt  Let us have a look at the impact of each operation of merging now   git checkout master   Switches to master branch git pull    Get the commits you don t have  May be your fellow workers have made them  git merge mobiledevicesupport    It will try to add D and E in master branch    Now  there are two types of merging possible   Fast forward merge True merge  Requires manual effort    Git will first try to make FF merge and if it finds any conflicts are not resolvable by git  It fails the merge and asks you to merge  In this case  a new commit will occur which is responsible for resolving conflicts in a txt   So Bottom line is Cross merging is not an issue and ultimately you have to do it and that is what syncing means  Make sure you dirty your hands in merging branches before doing anything in production

User · Answer

You are thinking in the right direction  Merge master with mobiledevicesupport continuously and merge  mobiledevicesupport with master when mobiledevicesupport is stable  Each developer will have his own branch and can merge to and from either on master or  mobiledevicesupport depending on their role

[git] How to keep a git branch in sync with master

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