Do I need to checkout and pull a remote git branch before I merge it in?

Question

My normal process for merging in develop to my feature\my-feature branch is:

name@home ~/myRepo (feature/my-feature)
$ git checkout develop
$ git pull
$ git checkout feature/my-feature
$ git merge develop
$ git mergetool

Can this be replaced with:

name@home ~/myRepo (feature/my-feature)
$ git fetch
$ git merge origin/develop
$ git mergetool

Does fetch retrieve enough information about the changes from the remote origin/develop to allow me to merge from origin/develop rather than develop?

Is it bad practice to have feature/my-feature ahead of develop with changes from the remote origin/develop?

Answer 1

You can directly pull your remote branch develop, but you may need to mention the remote repository (in your case, origin):

git checkout feature
git pull origin develop

This will result in a merge commit, where the message mentions origin/develop.

Without mentioning the remote repo, I'm afraid that the merge part of the pull would merge your local branch develop, not the fetched one. But do try it!