How to fast-forward a branch to head

Question

I switched to master after developing on a branch for a long time  The log shows      Your branch is behind  origin master  by 167 commits  and can be fast-forwarded    I tried   git checkout HEAD   It has no effect  This is because I have checkout an intermediate commit on master   How to make master stay on head

User · Answer

Move your branch pointer to the HEAD   git branch -f master   Your branch master already exists  so git will not allow you to overwrite it  unless you use    -f  this argument stands for --force   Or you can use rebase   git rebase HEAD master   Do it on your own risk

User · Answer

In cases where you re somewhere behind on a branch   it is safer to rebase any local changes you may have  git pull --rebase  This help prevent unnecessary merge-commits

User · Answer

Doing   git checkout master git pull origin   will fetch and merge the origin master branch  you may just say git pull as origin is the default

User · Answer

No complexities required  just stand at your branch and do a git pull  it worked for me  Or  as a second try git pull origin master  only in case if you are unlucky with the first command

User · Answer

In your case  to fast-forward  run     git merge --ff-only origin master   This uses the --ff-only option of git merge  as the question specifically asks for  fast-forward    Here is an excerpt from git-merge 1  that shows more fast-forward options   --ff  --no-ff  --ff-only     Specifies how a merge is handled when the merged-in history is already a descendant of the current history   --ff is the default unless merging an annotated      and possibly signed  tag that is not stored in its natural place in the refs tags  hierarchy  in which case --no-ff is assumed       With --ff  when possible resolve the merge as a fast-forward  only update the branch pointer to match the merged branch  do not create a merge commit   When     not possible  when the merged-in history is not a descendant of the current history   create a merge commit       With --no-ff  create a merge commit in all cases  even when the merge could instead be resolved as a fast-forward       With --ff-only  resolve the merge as a fast-forward when possible  When not possible  refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status      I fast-forward often enough that it warranted an alias     git config --global alias ff  merge --ff-only   upstream     Now I can run this to fast-forward     git ff

User · Answer

To rebase the current local tracker branch moving local changes on top of the latest remote state     git fetch  amp  amp  git rebase   More generally  to fast-forward and drop the local changes  hard reset       git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout   the branch name   amp  amp  git reset --hard origin   the branch name    to fast-forward and keep the local changes  rebase      git fetch  amp  amp  git checkout   the branch name   amp  amp  git rebase origin   the branch name      - to undo the change caused by unintentional hard reset first do git reflog  that displays the state of the HEAD in reverse order  find the hash the HEAD was pointing to before the reset operation  usually obvious  and hard reset the branch to that hash

User · Answer

git checkout master git pull   should do the job   You will get the  Your branch is behind  message every time when you work on a branch different than master  someone does changes to master and you git pull    branch      hack hack hack  while someone push the changes to origin master  branch    git pull      now the origin master reference is pulled  but your master is not merged with it   branch    git checkout master  master       now master is behind origin master and can be fast forwarded  this will pull and merge  so merge also newer commits to origin master   master    git pull   this will just merge what you have already pulled  master    git merge origin master   now your master and origin master are in sync

User · Answer

Try git merge origin master   If you want to be sure that it only does a fast-forward  you can say git merge --ff-only origin master

User · Answer

To anyone that wants to Fast Forward they are not on to another remote branch  including itself  without checking out that branch  you can do   git fetch origin master other   This basically fast forwards the index of other to origin master if you are not on other branch  You can fast forward multiple branches this way   If you working on another branch for some time  and wanted to update stale branches from remote to their respective head   git fetch origin master master other other etc etc

User · Answer

If you are standing on a different branch and want to checkout the newest version of master you can also do  git checkout -B master origin master

User · Answer

In your situation  git rebase would also do the trick  Since you have no changes that master doesn t have  git will just fast-forward  If you are working with a rebase workflow  that might be more advisable  as you wouldn t end up with a merge commit if you mess up    username workstation   work  git status   On branch master   Your branch is behind  origin master  by 1 commit  and can be fast-forwarded       use  git pull  to update your local branch    nothing to commit  working directory clean username workstation   work  git rebase First  rewinding head to replay your work on top of it    Fast-forwarded master to refs remotes origin master    On branch master nothing to commit  working directory clean

[git] How to fast-forward a branch to head?

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