另一个远程的 Git 合并分支

Question

Nowadays, I see a lot of commits from Linus Torvalds and/or Gitster that look like so:

Merge branch 'maint' of git://github.com/git-l10n/git-po into maint …
* 'maint' of git://github.com/git-l10n/git-po:
  l10n: de.po: fix a few minor typos

or:

Merge branch 'upstream' of git://git.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/ralf/upst… …
…ream-linus

Pull MIPS update from Ralf Baechle:
...
* 'upstream' of git://git.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/ralf/upstream-linus: (22 commits)
  MIPS: SNI: Switch RM400 serial to SCCNXP driver
...

I have no idea how would one do that, although, I know about the git remote and git checkout and git merge that I use to merge forks (or "pull requests") but it does not generate such message, why? and how would someone do that (provide examples please)?

PS: I'm a fan of Linus Torvalds commits etc, like how detailed the description of his merges look ;P

PS: This is how I used to merge stuff:

git remote add anotherremoot
git checkout -b anotherbranch
git pull remoteshortcut
...do tests...
git checkout master
git merge anotherbranch
git push

The above example I learned from: http://viget.com/extend/i-have-a-pull-request-on-github-now-what

Answer 1

Just use git pull to pull the remote branch into master :

git remote add something git://host.example.com/path/to/repo.git
git checkout master
git pull something master

Or do it without adding a remote:

git pull git://host.example.com/path/to/repo.git

git pull fetches the remote branch, and merges it into the local branch. If possible, it does a fast-forward merge, which just means that it updates the current master to the latest commit without generating a merge commit. But if there are changes on both sides, it will do a merge, like the ones you see Linus and Junio doing, with the remote URL included.

If you want to guarantee that you get a merge commit, even if it could fast forward, do git pull -no-ff . If you want to make sure that pull never creates a merge commit (so fails if there are changes on both sides), do git pull --ff-only .

If you want to include a more detailed message, like the full log that Linus provides, do git pull --log . If you want to edit the message, instead of just using the automatically created message, use git pull --edit . See documentation for git pull for more options.