Git how to solve This branch is X commits ahead, X commits behind master

Question

I have a Git repo with a dev and a master branch. I'm adding new stuff on the dev branch and do commit those. So far so good, but I get the info that

This branch is 5 commits ahead, 12 commits behind master.

So what am I supposed to do now?

Basically I want to merge the master into the dev branch without losing the newly added changes to the dev branch, and then merge all changes into the master branch.

Can someone help me out?

Answer 1

As with most things in git you a have a couple options

Merge master into your dev branch

git fetch origin master   
git checkout dev
git merge origin/master
git checkout master
git merge dev

Rebase dev ontop of current master

git fetch origin master
git checkout dev
git rebase origin/master
git checkout master
git merge --no-ff dev

The rebase will look cleaner in your history.