How to check for changes on remote (origin) Git repository?

Question

Question

What are the Git commands to do the following workflow?

Scenario

I cloned from a repository and did some commits of my own to my local repository. In the meantime, my colleagues made commits to the remote repository. Now, I want to:

Check whether there are any new commits from other people on the remote repository, i.e. origin?

Say there were 3 new commits on the remote repository since my last pull, I would like to diff the remote repository's commits, i.e. HEAD~3 with HEAD~2, HEAD~2 with HEAD~1 and HEAD~1 with HEAD.

After knowing what changed remotely, I want to get the latest commits from the others.

My findings so far

For step 2: I know the caret notation HEAD^, HEAD^^, etc. and the tilde notation HEAD~2, HEAD~3, etc.

For step 3: That is, I guess, just a git pull.

Answer 1

For this you could use:

git fetch origin

This will update your remote branch to the latest version.

For a difference against remote you could use: 

git diff origin/master

And after checking that if you want to accept that changes you could use:

git merge origin/master 

Thus, you can see the diff between remote origin and git repository.