Confused about git rebase

Question

My workflow:

$ git remote -v
origin  [email protected]:abc/dev.git (fetch)
origin  [email protected]:abc/dev.git (push)
upstream  [email protected]:companyname/dev.git (fetch)
upstream  [email protected]:companyname/dev.git (push)

Fork [email protected]:companyname/dev.git using github web interface. Create [email protected]:abc/dev.git

Now:

1. git clone [email protected]:abc/dev.git
2. git remote add origin [email protected]:abc/dev.git
3. git remote add upstream [email protected]:companyname/dev.git 
4. git checkout -b upstream-master upstream/master
5. git checkout -b master origin/master

Now modify some code and create a commit on local master branch.

5.1. git add somecode.c
5.2. git commit -m "my commit for which I will make a PR" 
6. git push origin master

Now go to [email protected]:abc/dev.git on github web interface and create a PR for upstream/master:

Once the PR is merged, do:

7. git checkout upstream-master 
8. git pull --rebase

Now my local upstream-master has PR merge commit but master (which is origin/master) does not.

Q: Which branch should I rebase on which and why ?

After steps 7 and 8 should I do

git rebase origin-master

or should I do

git checkout origin-master 
git rebase upstream-master

I never see any place where you actually created a commit. There is a lot of confusion here. — Tim Biegeleisen, Aug 06 '15 at 01:08
You might want to check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15602037/git-rebase-upstream-master-vs-git-pull-rebase-upstream-master — Bacon, Aug 06 '15 at 01:08
You may *ever so slightly* be conflating rebasing with pulling from another remote branch here. — Makoto, Aug 06 '15 at 01:09
@Bacon in addition to being crunchy and tasty, you are also spot on. I think he is confused about merging vs. rebasing strategy. — Tim Biegeleisen, Aug 06 '15 at 01:09
Right. I think here's the OP would like to actually do a git rebase origin/master in his local upstream-master branch. I agree that a merge would be cleaner. — Bacon, Aug 06 '15 at 01:14
@Bacon exactly reverse. I wanted to get the PR merge commit which is available in upstream into my local origin/master. — Ankur Agarwal, Aug 06 '15 at 01:20
This isn't really a rebase question, it's a question about pull strategy. — Tim Biegeleisen, Aug 06 '15 at 01:21
The unclear part is that you say doing a commit when you just indicate doing a push (which is a separate step in git, i.e you're pushing a local commit to the remote branch). — Bacon, Aug 06 '15 at 01:22
@TimBiegeleisen It is a question about pull strategy using `rebase` — Ankur Agarwal, Aug 06 '15 at 01:27
I made some edits based on feedback in comments, is this clearer now ? — Ankur Agarwal, Aug 06 '15 at 01:29

Bacon · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-06T01:38:02.450

1

If you want to retrieve in your local master something that was merged on the remote upstream/master branch, you should:

git checkout master

to position yourself into the local branch that you want to update

and then

git rebase upstream/master

To retrieve the modifications from the remove upstream/master branch into your current, local branch

edited Aug 06 '15 at 01:38

answered Aug 06 '15 at 01:30

Bacon

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That is the source of my confusion. Why should I not do : `git checkout upstream-master` and `git rebase master` . After all I am trying to `rebase` upstream-master onto master. No ? – Ankur Agarwal Aug 06 '15 at 01:33
2

Yes, so you need to position yourself into the branch where you want to retrieve the modifications, which is master, in this case. When rebasing, you specify the branch from which you want to get those modifications. – Bacon Aug 06 '15 at 01:36

Confused about git rebase

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