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What does

git merge origin origin/master

mean? It looks to me like were merging a remote repository with a branch on the remote repository. Here, origin is the remote repository and origin/master is the master branch on the remote repository. So what two branches are being merged? Thanks in advance!

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All parameters to 'git merge' in this case are branches that you're merging from, i.e. source branches. You're always merging to the current branch.

Because origin is a remote name, git automatically expands it to that remote's default branch, so it's actually equivalent to origin/master – the command is being told to merge the same branch twice.

(It is possible to merge more than one branch, known as "octopus merge", but this is rarely done – and when it is done, the branches of course are different.)

As it is, the command doesn't make much sense. Maybe it should have been either git merge origin/master (without the duplication) or git pull origin master.

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  • Thanks grawity! That makes sense, but you're right, doesn't make sense to mere two of the same branches together. For some context, here is where I saw the command (see the accepted answer): stackoverflow.com/a/45272685/11535048
    – eball
    Jul 25, 2019 at 15:40

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