from a remote branch to a local branch : git issue

Question

I am on a repo on github. I have one local branch called : master and on the remote repo there are two branches, branch1 and branch2. I cloned the repo from the branch1. But then, I wanted to pull branch2, which is quite different from branch1, into master. So I did : git pull origin master:branche2

But when I run a git diff command between master and the new local branch2, I have no differences. Does this mean that there was no merging, and that the former master has been totally replaced by the imported branch2 ?

Answer 1

Do the following:

git branch branch2
git checkout branch2
git pull origin branch2
git checkout master
git merge branch2

Answer 2

In git if you need to change from one branch to another the you need to do:

git checkout branch_name

example: Just change to the branch you want as a base:

example: git checkout branch1

if you are on branch1 and want to merge branch2 on to branch1 then:

git merge origin/branch2

Now you have the differences on branch2 merged on to branch1.