Skip to main content

Your branch is ahead of ‘originmaster’ by x commits

28th October, 2022

Updated: 28th October, 2022

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

    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.


    c0b3f0c1-3df5-41d1-b12d-7df8b38573e7

    Created on: 28th October, 2022

    Last updated: 28th October, 2022

    Tagged With: