 <p>If I understand you correctly, you want to <em>not</em> include any of the changes from <code>master</code>, but just "close" it and keep going with exactly what you have in <code>symfony</code>. If so, use the <code>ours</code> <a href="https://git-scm.com/docs/merge-strategies" rel="nofollow">merge strategy</a>, which will create a merge commit without incorporating any of the changes from the other branch and thus effectively "close" the other branch. The last two commands simply rearrange the branch names.</p> <pre><code>git checkout symfony git merge -s ours master git checkout -B master git branch -D symfony </code></pre>