GIT continues to confound me with its unhelpful error warnings :( This one really deserves a prize:

"git merge is not possible because you have unmerged files"

My situation: My master branch on github was edited (directly in the browser) while my local master branch was also edited.

Foolishly, I supposed you could simply merge the two versions and be done with it, but alas, I cannot merge - because my files are unmerged.

git merge remote/master

results in

error: merge is not possible because you have unmerged files.
hint: Fix them up in the work tree, and then use 'git add/rm <file>'
hint: as appropriate to mark resolution and make a commit.
fatal: Exiting because of an unresolved conflict.

So, after adding and committing the local change and then trying to merge again, I get:

merge: remote/master - not something we can merge

Clearly I am missing something essential here... Do I have the wrong idea about what merging means? How do I fix this issue of having a different remote master / local master branch?

git continues to confuse me with its unhelpful error warnings This one really deserves a prize:

git merge is not possible because you have unmerged files

My situation: My master branch on github was edited (directly in the browser) while my local master branch was also edited.

I wrongly suppose you could simply merge the two versions and be done with it, but also, I cannot merge - because my files are unmerged.

git merge remote/master

results in

error: merge is not possible because you have unmerged files.
hint: Fix them up in the work tree, and then use 'git add/rm <file>'
hint: as appropriate to mark resolution and make a commit.
fatal: Exiting because of an unresolved conflict.

So, after adding and committing the local change and then trying to merge again, I get:

merge: remote/master - not something we can merge

Clearly I am missing something essential here... Do I have the wrong idea about what merging means? How do I fix this issue of having a different remote master / local master branch?