Working with other developers on projects has often resulted in large manual merges of parallel work. At the beginning this is straightforward as there are a small number of files and a short history. Things change as projects progress and I've sometimes spent hours on small updates. Here is a git recipe for merging in those changes more easily. Scenario 1. No new changes in our repo computer:repo user$ git checkout -b import computer:repo user$ cp -R ../new-work/* ./ computer:repo user$ git add . computer:repo user$ git commit -m "Merging in new work" computer:repo user$ git checkout master computer:repo user$ git merge import Scenario 2. Changes in our repo Figure out what the sha of the last common commit was and computer:repo user$ git checkout [sha1 of the old commit] -b import computer:repo user$ cp -R ../new-work/* ./ computer:repo user$ git add . computer:repo user$ git commit -m "Merging in new work" computer:repo user$ git checkout master computer:repo user$ git merge import Via stackoverflow