Difference between different refspecs in a git-pull call

Question

Whats the difference between using the following git commands

git pull origin master
git pull origin master:master

Some ob

Answer 1

The first one tells git to pull the branch master from the remote origin. It doesn't tell git where to merge the fetched commits into. It uses the specified merge key in the configuration.

The second one tells git to pull the branch master from the remove origin and merge it into the local branch master. This overrides the merge key in the configuration.