Not at all. Where did you come up with that? That would merge in any commits in master not already in experimental and the next command would fail because a branch 'master' already exists.

To do what you are describing you would do this (or something similar:

    git checkout master; git merge experimental

fr0sty was definitely not tactful, but his commands are correct. Merge always brings the branch you specify onto the commit you are currently on. The branch command either lists branches (when no other arguments, only certain options, are specified) or creates branches. Checkout is the command used to move around between commits in your repository.

Branching and merging is covered pretty well by Pro Git[1]

[1] http://progit.org/book/ch3-2.html

I'm still just getting the hang of git, but I've found this best practices[1] tutorial the most handy to just get started. I needed to play around at this basic level before any of these other more complicated comments started to make sense. Check it out, it's very short.

[1] http://ariejan.net/2009/06/08/best-practice-the-git-developm...