如何检查master是否已合并到当前分支

Question

I was trying to find out if my branch was up to date with the remote master branch without actually running git pull , and I read elsewhere that

git branch -r --no-merged | grep master

should tell you.

However, if I run that, I don't get the remote master in the output (I do however get it in the output from --merged ).

So I tried doing a fetch (not a pull), and running it. At this point, it decides that in fact, the I do need a merge,

git branch -r --no-merged HEAD | grep master

gives

  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

but interestingly, if I do -a, the local master doesn't come out in the list. But it does come out in the --merged list.

I found out a way of working out if I need to do a fetch, but the way these are working is confusing me somewhat. and I'd like to know what I'm missing.

Is git branch -r not actually going to the remote repository? Or am I missing something to make it do so? Or is the sequence above what I actually need to do?

Answer 1

All (normal) git commands except fetch and pull will only look at the local state. So they will only tell you stuff about the state of the remote when you last fetched. If you really want to know if you should pull, do a fetch first.

If for some reason you do not want to do a fetch (I can't think of a good one), have a look at git ls-remote .