title: What does git merge origin branchname do?
body: <p>Note the lack of a "/" in the command.</p>
  
  <p>I am a git novice. </p>
  
  <p>I am working on the same codebase, same branch, on two separate machines (one dev machine, one test machine). I pushed code on dev-machine. </p>
  
  <pre><code>git push origin branchname
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>On test-machine, I did:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git fetch origin 
  git merge origin branchname
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Git reported "Already up-to-date. Yeeah!" But I knew I wasn't.</p>
  
  <p>Eventually I did the correct </p>
  
  <pre><code>git merge origin/branchname 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What happened when I screwed up and did:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git merge origin branchname 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><a href="http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge" rel="nofollow">http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge</a> mentions an "octopus merge" but "origin" is special (not a branch name) so I don't think that happened.</p>