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

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 reposit

Answer 1

git status does not always show the difference between master and origin/master even after a fetch.

If you want the combination git fetch origin && git status to work, you need to specify the tracking information between the local branch and origin:

# git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/ 

For the master branch:

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master