Get updates list before merging

gistfile1.eclass

# I was trying to figure out how to get a list of changes made remotely on Git
# before applying. Here's what I came up with.

# First, get the latest data from the origin
git fetch origin

# Then, get the changes and output to a file
git log HEAD..origin/master > changes.txt

# Merge changes in
git merge origin/master

Unless you only need changes from origin, you can remove 'origin' from the first command, and simply run
git fetch

This is part of a CI script I'm writing. The basic idea is that I only want to do a new build if there have been changes. I use the changelog to determine if there have been changes, so:

if [ -s changes.txt]; then
    git merge origin/master
    #do build
fi

Seems to be working so far.