title: Git: Already up to Date
body: <p>I was unable to explain why I had this message. I had a master branch, created a new branch, made some commits and wanted to merge them back onto master, which I would have expected to cause master to fast forward. Indeed test cases confirm.</p>
  
  <p>However in my search for a solution I hit this post:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/634546/git-merge-reports-already-up-to-date-though-there-is-a-difference/27822881#27822881">Git merge reports &quot;Already up-to-date&quot; though there is a difference</a></p>
  
  <p>Can anyone explain why in this example the reporter explains there would be no fast forward?</p>
  
  <p>Additional information I can think of:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I was not in a detached head mode.</li>
  <li><p>I checked back out to master to merge new branch:</p>
  
  <pre><code> git checkout -b new-branch
   git commit -am "changes to new branch"
   git checkout master
   git merge new-branch // expect fast forward but got the already up to date msg
  </code></pre></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>In a simple test case I dont get the above - so something to do with the mess of the repo, but more importantly I dont understand the rationale of the comments in the above stack overflow link - which would seem on the face of it to possibly explain something related to my scenario?</p>