Merging to a branch in git without switching to it

Question

I have an application running in a git repository on a branch (say dev). The application modifies the content in some the repository and commits them. I now hav

Answer 1

This works very well for me when wanting to merge two branches without having to checkout either of them:

git fetch . <modified branch>:<destination branch>

Other options are described here.

Answer 2

The "master" in your case appears to be "fast-forwardable". You could "push" the branch to master.

cd /path_to_dir_with_no_branch_switch/
git push . appbranch:master

Answer 3

One possible solution would be to clone the repo and perform the merge in said clone (with master checked out), being able to solve potential conflicts there.

Then, at a later date, when able to checkout master in the first repo, you would pull from the clone the updated master branch.