How to Fix Git Refusing to Merge Unrelated Histories Issue
A simple guide to resolving the error when merging branches with no common ancestor in Git.
When I tried to merge a git branch from a different repository, I got the following error:
% git merge development-branch
fatal: refusing to merge unrelated historiesGit is refusing to merge the branch because the histories do not share a common ancestor.
The error message fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories means that the two branches have completely separate histories.
Luckily, this is easy to fix. You just need to add the --allow-unrelated-histories option to your merge command.
According to the official documentation:
By default, the
git mergecommand refuses to merge histories that do not share a common ancestor. This option can be used to override this safety when merging histories of two projects that started their lives independently. As that is a very rare occasion, no configuration variable to enable this by default exists or will be added.
Here’s an example:
% git merge development-branch --allow-unrelated-histories
Merge made by the 'ort' strategy.
infix-postfix-prefix/README.md | 9 +
infix-postfix-prefix/build.xml | 74 ++
infix-postfix-prefix/manifest.mf | 3 +
infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/build-impl.xml | 1411 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/genfiles.properties | 8 +
infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/project.properties | 73 ++
infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/project.xml | 16 +
.../src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JMainFrame.form | 458 +++++++++
.../src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JMainFrame.java | 513 ++++++++++
.../src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JNotation.java | 218 +++++
.../src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JStack.java | 52 +
11 files changed, 2835 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/README.md
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/build.xml
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/manifest.mf
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/build-impl.xml
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/genfiles.properties
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/project.properties
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/nbproject/project.xml
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JMainFrame.form
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JMainFrame.java
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JNotation.java
create mode 100644 infix-postfix-prefix/src/net/junian/mathnotationconv/JStack.javaThat’s it! If there are any merge conflicts, resolve them and then push your changes.
Hope this helps. Thanks for reading!
