git pull on a different branch

If I'm working on a branch and then realize I need to merge another branch into mine here is my current workflow (for this example lets say that I'm working on my-branch and want to merge in master):

git stash
git checkout master
git pull
git checkout my-branch
git merge master
git stash pop

Is there a way in git to pull a branch other than the currently checked out one, or is there a better way to do this?

For example, here's what I'd like to be able to do (again lets say I'm on my-branch and want to merge in master):

git pull master
git merge master

The git-pull man page says that a git pull is just a get fetch followed by a git merge, so is there a way to do the merge part of the git pull on a branch other than the one that's currently checked out?

Or is what I'm asking for just not possible?

I found an incantation that worked for me:

git fetch origin master:master

then (if you want to merge right away):

git merge master

I was really surprised how hard it was to find an answer to this since it seems like it would be a common use case.

Try this:

git pull yourRepositoryName master

We can fetch changes from another branch in the same repository using git pull command like this:

$ git pull origin <target-branch>

See the EXAMPLES section of man git-pull :

> • Merge into the current branch the remote branch next: > > $ git pull origin next

You could also try this:

git fetch
git merge origin/master

This won't update your local master pointer, but it will merge the latest origin/master into your current local branch.

Let's say you have these branches:

• master
• branch1
• branch2

So you want to pull in changes from branch1 to branch2. Here is what you can do:

git checkout branch2
git pull origin branch1

I use IntelliJ mostly, I hope there is a context menu item can do this master branch update, then merge master into current.

The solid way is:

git checkout master
git pull --ff origin master
git checkout devel
# git merge --ff devel

so there is an alias

git config --global alias.update-branch '! bash -c "X1=\`git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null | cut -b 12-\`; echo pulling branch $1 ... && git checkout $1 && git pull --ff origin $1 && git checkout \$X1 "'

# call it from 'devel' branch:
git update-branch master

You may improve it to compliant with yours, such as merge master into current branch right now, ....