How do I synchronize two branches in the same Git repository?
If you don't need the branch around:
If you've merged foo back to master, "git branch -d foo" to kill the topic branch, and then "checkout -b foo" in the future when you need to hack on it again.
If you do need the branch around:
You can rebase your topic branch against the master branch:
git checkout foo
git rebase master
Or:
git rebase master foo
Rebasing is the process of moving or combining a sequence of commits to a new base commit. Rebasing is most useful and easily visualized in the context of a feature branching workflow. The general process can be visualized as the following:
The example below combines git rebase with git merge to maintain a linear project history. This is a quick and easy way to ensure that your merges will be fast-forwarded.
# Start a new feature
git checkout -b new-feature master
# Edit files
git commit -a -m "Start developing a feature"
In the middle of our feature, we realize there’s a security hole in our project
# Create a hotfix branch based off of master
git checkout -b hotfix master
# Edit files
git commit -a -m "Fix security hole"
# Merge back into master
git checkout master
git merge hotfix
git branch -d hotfix
After merging the hotfix into master, we have a forked project history. Instead of a plain git merge, we’ll integrate the feature branch with a rebase to maintain a linear history:
git checkout new-feature
git rebase master
This moves new-feature to the tip of master, which lets us do a standard fast-forward merge from master:
git checkout master
git merge new-feature
Taken from Atlassian Git Rebase Tutorial