The fact that the branches are different is no indication of whether or not merging would introduce new differences. What you describe seems perfectly normal, it is just that the rohoog/master branch which you are trying to merge into master doesn't contain any new code. Perhaps it has already been merged.
For instance, consider this toy example:
$ git init (master) $ cat foo.sh #!/bin/bash echo "Hello world!" (master) $ git add foo.sh (master) $ git commit -m "first commit" foo.sh [master (root-commit) 192b827] first commit 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) create mode 100755 foo.sh (newBranch) $ git checkout -b newBranch Switched to a new branch 'newBranch' (newBranch) $ sed 's/Hello/Goodbye/' foo.sh > bar.sh (newBranch) $ ls bar.sh foo.sh (newBranch) $ cat bar.sh #!/bin/bash echo "Goodbye world!" (newBranch) $ git add bar.sh (newBranch) $ git commit -m "goodbye" bar.sh [newBranch 87746c9] goodbye 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) create mode 100644 bar.sh At this point, my newBranch has an extra file, so your find/diff approach would see a difference. However, if I try to merge master into it, I will see no changes:
$ git merge master Already up to date. As you can see, there is a situation where although find/diffwill find differences, no changes will be made when merging. And, indeed, even on the [github page][1] you linked to, you can see that the rohood/master branch is [90 commits behind][2]waveshareteam/e-Paper:master`, the repo and branch is was forked off of:
