You need to use either merge or rebase, or git won't allow you to push. Also, pull doesn't modify your remote tracking branch (origin/branch) - fetch does that.

You need to use either merge or rebase, or git won't allow you to push. Also, pull doesn't modify your remote tracking branch (origin/branch) - fetch does that. I do agree that usually, when you have a local branch dedicated to a particular remote tracking branch, it's not a good idea to merge the remote into your local branch - it's generally much better to rebase your local branch onto the remote tracking branch (pull -r).