Differences between git pull origin master & git pull origin/master

Question

What is the difference between git pull origin master and git pull origin/master ?

Answer 1

git pull origin master will pull changes from the origin remote, master branch and merge them to the local checked-out branch.

git pull origin/master will pull changes from the locally stored branch origin/master and merge that to the local checked-out branch. The origin/master branch is essentially a "cached copy" of what was last pulled from origin, which is why it's called a remote branch in git parlance. This might be somewhat confusing.

You can see what branches are available with git branch and git branch -r to see the "remote branches".

Answer 2

git pull origin master will fetch all the changes from the remote's master branch and will merge it into your local. We generally do not use git pull origin/master. We can do the same thing by git merge origin/master. It will merge all the changes from "cached copy" of origin's master branch into your local branch. In my case, git pull origin/master is throwing the error:

fatal: 'origin/master' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Answer 3

git pull = git fetch + git merge origin/branch

git pull and git pull origin branch only differ in that the latter will only "update" origin/branch and not all origin/* as git pull does.

git pull origin/branch will just not work because it's trying to do a git fetch origin/branch which is invalid.

Question related: git fetch + git merge origin/master vs git pull origin/master