Solving the ‘Your branch is ahead of ‘origin/master’ by x commits’ issue after pulling using git.

This is an annoyingly simple issue – so simple that it may not be blogged elsewhere.

You have a remote repository and push some code updates to it from a local repository – you then switch to a different local repository and pull down the updated code from the remote repository with:

$ git pull origin mybranch

which updates your local mybranch nicely.

Now when you run

$ git status

it says everything is up-to-date – but you get the horrible ’Your branch is ahead of ‘origin/master’ by x commits’ message – WTF!

What this is saying is that your local branch – mybranch – is ahead of your local copy of the remote – origin/mybranch.

See – your local copy of origin/mybranch (in this case origin/6.x-1.x) still points to the previous commit.

The thing is – I was being too clever and trying to avoid pulling and updating master.  What I should have run was:

$ git pull origin

This will fetch and merge the current branch from the remote to my local branch- and also update my local tracking branch – origin/mybranch – to point to the latest commit.

If you run

$ git pull origin

after running

$ git pull origin mybranch

it seems to be safe and to sort out the issue of ’Your branch is ahead of ‘origin/master’ by x commits’.

Hopefully this quick note might help someone who found themselves in the same position as me.