Merge questions

[Delette Collins]

New Git users here. We have been going about things incorrectly and I am trying to clean things up. We have a temp branch and a master branch. Changes have been made and pushed on both branches. Ultimately I would like to get everything from the temp branch over onto the master branch and then I remove the temp branch so I can implement GitFlow. In source tree what branch should be checked out when I click merge and how can I ensure that I am merging the temp branch to master and not vice versa?

[Johannes Kilian · Accepted solution]

In source tree what branch should be checked out when I click merge and how can I ensure that I am merging the temp branch to master and not vice versa?

You always need to be on the branch where you want to merge your changes into - in your case: "merging the temp branch to master" means; checkout master and merge the changes from branch temp. That's not a question of the git-client (i.e SourceTree) but a general question on git.

Ultimately I would like to get everything from the temp branch over onto the master branch and then I remove the temp branch so I can implement GitFlow

Change the current branch to master in git on Stackoverflow seems to give the answer here.

[Johannes Kilian]

You always need to be on the branch where you want to merge your changes into

Consider yourself being the branch to be merged into: do you want to fetch the changes on your own - or do you want to be forced by another branch to involve it's changes? I think you prefer deciding on your own, which changes should be incorporated rather than being forced to involve the changes...

Therefore: While merging, you have to be on the branch where you want to merge the changes from another branch into.