What does 'git merge' with no arguments do?

Question

I've seen people doing

git merge

i.e. using "git merge" with no arguments. It looks like it might do something useful. But I couldn't find documentation for this scenario on git-scm.com.

What does "git merge" do in this scenario?

Answer 1

It would try and merge its upstream branch (git merge)

If no commit is given from the command line, merge the remote-tracking branches that the current branch is configured to use as its upstream.

So check, to see if a branch has an upstream repo associated to it:

git config remote.$(git config branch.$(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD).remote).url

This uses:

• "Find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking"
• "How to get the name of the current git branch into a variable in a shell script?"

---

For Windows, crashneb suggests in the comments:

for /f %b in ('git symbolic-ref --short HEAD') do \
  @(for /f %r in ('git config branch.%b.remote') do \
    @(git config remote.%r.url))