Git fork and pstream sync with existing branch

Question

1. I fork a master repo on Bitbucket.com?
2. I create a new branch called "branch-A" on my copied repo from #1.
3. I switch to "branch-A"
4. I point "upstream" to the master repo. I did a "git fetch upstream"
5. I ran "git merge upstream/master"

It is strange to me at at step 5, git merge DID NOT apply the merge to the master branch on my local repo, instead, it applied the merge to "branch-A". Is this the proper behavior of git? Or I'm missing something here?

Answer 1

It is strange to me at at step 5, git merge DID NOT apply the merge to the master branch on my local repo, instead, it applied the merge to "branch-A".

Yes, it is the expected behavior since, in step 3, you switched to branchA.
git merge merges in the current branch.

To apply the merge to master, swtich back to master before step 5

git checkout master 
git merge upstream/master

An alternative approach would be to:

• set local master to track upstream/master (meaning by default it pulls from upstream)

  git branch --set-upstream master upstream/master
  

• set the push url to your remote fork origin:

  git config remote.pushDefault origin
  

That way, a simple git pull (after git checkout master) would always pull from upstream, but a git push would push to your fork origin.