I have 3 branches.
master [ Live Server]
\
stage [ Stage Server Where we test changes; merge commits ]
\
Dev [ Local Machine ]
I would like to downstream the changes to. Each of these branches are set to tracking each other.
Normally, to downstream the changes i do this:
git checkout stage && git merge master
Then i checkout dev and i do the same
git checkout dev && git merge stage
Then push them all:
git push origin --all
Is there a way to downstream those changes without checking out into each branch?
I maybe using the wrong terminology. I'm not totally sure if i'm using upstream/downstream terminology correctly.
You can indeed "merge" a branch B into branch A without having to check out branch A, but only if it's a fast-forward merge.
You can use a refspec with fetch to do the "merge". If merging branch B into branch A using git merge would result in a fast-forward merge, then you can do the following without having to checkout A:
git fetch <remote> B:A
If <remote> is . then this will operate from within the local repo.
The above matches the refspec format
git fetch <remote> <source>:<destination>
From the documentation for git fetch (emphasis mine):
The remote ref that matches
<src>is fetched, and if<dst>is not empty string, the local ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using<src>.