title: Merge from an upstream remote branch into a local remote branch
body: <p>We use a fork model in our organization, and I am trying to merge the updates from an upstream branch to my local branch.</p>
  
  <p>This is my git set up.</p>
  
  <pre><code>kartik@ ~/sourcecode/myproject (defect-875) $ git remote -v
  origin  git@github.com/kartik/myproject.git (fetch)
  origin  git@github.com/kartik/myproject.git (push)
  upstream    git@github.com:MyOrg/myproject.git (fetch)
  upstream    git@github.com:MyOrg/myproject.git (push)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The upstream has two branches</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>master</p></li>
  <li><p>devel</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I need to sync my local branch with <code>devel</code> branch upstream.</p>
  
  <p>This is what I have tried</p>
  
  <pre><code>git fetch upstream
  git merge upstream/defect-875
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where defect-875 is my local branch.</p>
  
  <p>I always get this error message</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>merge: upstream/defect-875 - not something we can merge</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I also tried this</p>
  
  <pre><code>kartik@ ~/sourcecode/myproject (defect-875) $ git merge upstream/devel -m "Merging from seo redirect."
   merge: upstream/devel - not something we can merge
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How do I resolve this issue?</p>