Re: git merge remote branch says "Merge commit ..."?

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 05:29:41PM +0000, Eric Raible wrote:

Jeff King <peff <at> peff.net> writes:

quoted

I think doing a "git merge origin/master" is perfectly normal for some
workflows. For example:

  $ git fetch origin ;# grab it
  $ gitk origin/master...master ;# check if it is good to merge
  $ git merge origin/master ;# and merge it

The final step _could_ be a pull, but there is no point in repeating the
fetch (which might be costly).

My understanding is that if the objects already exist
locally then this is not going to be costly at all.
The negotiation of what is needed is cheap, isn't it?

No, it is not terribly expensive. But you do have to talk to the server,
which may mean making an ssh connection, or the server may be overloaded
and slow. So it can take a few seconds instead of a few microseconds.

There is actually another reason not to pull, though: you just inspected
what is in origin/master, so that is what you are expecting to merge.
If there is new stuff on the remote, you probably don't want to merge it
without similarly inspecting it.

-Peff