Confused about the Local Master and the Remote Master

Joshua Eirman

I am currently using GitHub and I am trying to consider BitBucket instead, I see there is this community for questions.

My first question is why is there a remote master branch and a local master branch?  And after a feature branch is pushed to it's remote, are the commits merged with the remote master or the local master?

Thank you so much,

Josheir

jredmond

Each clone of a given repo is meant to be more or less complete, and that means that each clone will have its own set of branches. The main difference between a local branch and a remote branch is where it's located: local is kept on your own system, and remote is kept someplace else (such as Bitbucket). A `git push` or `git pull` can help you synchronize the two, but otherwise they're independent of each other.

If you push a feature branch to a remote, then the commits are not on any master until you merge them. From there, the answer to "are the commits merged with the remote master or the local master" depends on where you perform the merge:

• If you merge locally (i.e. with `git merge` on your own system), then the commits will be merged to local master. They won't appear on remote master until you push them.
• If you merge on the remote (i.e. with the "Merge" button on the Bitbucket UI, or with `git merge` on the remote shell), then the commits will be merged to remote master. They won't appear on local master until you pull them.