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Comments on After git fetch, how to fast forward my branch?
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After git fetch, how to fast forward my branch?
I did git fetch to quickly get latest commits. I did this instead of git pull so I could deal with merge conflicts offline. But my repository is still stuck on the old commit, and now git pull fails because I can no longer connect to the internet. How do I "activate" the changes that I fetched?
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The answer by hkotsubo is correct. But just in case you're being very specific about fast-forwarding, it's worth stressing that you can use --ff-only as an option on the merge to abort if it requires a merge commit.
git merge --ff-only origin/branch_name
Where is this useful? I have my git pull set to fail if the merge would create a merge commit. Typically, I'd rather rebase my new commits than make a merge commit unnecessarily.
[pull]
ff = only
But that only happens for pulls.[1] If I explicitly ask for a merge after fetching, Git's going to give me a merge, even if it makes a merge commit… unless I --ff-only it not to.
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This configuration can be added for merges as well as for pulls, but I find that the
pull.ffconfig set toonlygives me the confidence to pull whenever I want. If a fast forward is unavailable, Git just does a fetch without merging. I don't bother settingmerge.fftoonly, since I only evergit mergecommits I already have locally and I'm pretty cognizant of when it'll merge or fast forward. ↩︎
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