Git - Automatically fast forward all tracking branches on pull

Shell script that fast-forwards all branches that have their upstream branch set to the matching origin/ branch without doing any checkouts

• it doesn't change your current branch at any time, no need to deal with working copy changes and time lost checking out

• it only does fast-forwards, branches that cannot be fast-forwarded will show an error message and will be skipped

Make sure all your branches' upstream branches are set correctly by running git branch -vv. Set the upstream branch with git branch -u origin/yourbanchname

Copy-paste into a file and chmod 755:

#!/bin/shcurbranch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)for branch in $(git for-each-ref refs/heads --format="%(refname:short)"); do        upbranch=$(git config --get branch.$branch.merge | sed 's:refs/heads/::');        if [ "$branch" = "$upbranch" ]; then                if [ "$branch" = "$curbranch" ]; then                        echo Fast forwarding current branch $curbranch                        git merge --ff-only origin/$upbranch                else                        echo Fast forwarding $branch with origin/$upbranch                        git fetch . origin/$upbranch:$branch                fi        fidone;

If you really want to fast forward all local branches that are tracking remote branches you might want to consider adding this as an alias to your ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]    pull-all = !"for b in $(git for-each-ref refs/heads --format='%(refname)') ; do git checkout ${b#refs/heads/} ; git pull --ff-only ; done"

You can then run git pull-all, it will iterate through your local branches and run a git pull --ff-only on each.

But wait:

• git won't merge (the second step of git pull after the fetch part) files unless the branch is checked out first. See "Can “git pull --all” update all my local branches?"
• git pull on master will merge files on master, meaning the next push will be a fast-forward one. A non fast-forward can only occur if a push to the remote master from another repo has been done prior to your push.

Note: I suppose you have tracked all your remote branches as in "Track all remote git branches as local branches."

Note: Git 2.0 (Q2 2014) will introduce with commit b814da8 a config push.ff:

pull.ff::

By default, Git does not create an extra merge commit when merging a commit that is a descendant of the current commit. Instead, the tip of the current branch is fast-forwarded.

• When set to false, this variable tells Git to create an extra merge commit in such a case (equivalent to giving the --no-ff option from the command line).
• When set to only, only such fast-forward merges are allowed (equivalent to giving the --ff-only option from the command line).