Updating git branches you're not on

27 January, 2015

Do you use git?

Have you ever been on a feature branch and wanted to pull all the upstream changes into your master branch before rebasing onto that? Of course you have.

If you’re sick of doing this:

$ git checkout master
 
$ git pull
 
$ git checkout feature-branch
 
$ git rebase master

Add the following lines to your .gitconfig:

[alias]
 
    remote-for-branch = "!f() { git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:short)' `for b in $@; do echo refs/heads/$b; done` | sed 's:/.*$::'; }; f"
 
    sync = "!f() { for b in $@; do git fetch `git remote-for-branch $b` $b:$b; done }; f"

Now you can do this!

$ git sync master
 
$ git rebase master

Thanks to this Stack Overflow answer for the technique, which I just wrapped up in an alias to make it easier to use.

git, alias