How to pull updates from remote branch

Question

There is remote branch: R

There is local branch: L (which was created based on R)

So the graph is

 R--R1---R2---  
 \           
  L--L1--

Right now, I just need keep L branch always have the updates from R

What is the simplest way I can do this?

I think the answer is to:

1. pull updates from local R first
2. checkout to L and merge

But this does not seem very straightforward and I need do some conflict handling manually.

Answer 1

You want to make L a tracking branch for R. You can do this with the command.

git branch --track L remote/R

Then, any time you are on branch L, just run git pull remote and it will pull updates and automatically merge them into your repository.

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Remote-Branches

Answer 2

You can pull directly into L from R. Assuming L is checked out:

git pull origin R

L doesn't have to be tracking branch for you to pull in remote changes.