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--Allow-Unrelated-Histories In GIT

In this article, we will discuss --allow-unrelated-histories in git.

Purpose

Whenever the programmer tries to merge the two unrelated branches, you get the following error - fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories.

The --allow-unrelated-histories allows you to merge two unrelated branches.

What Are Unrelated Branches?

Unrelated branches are those that have different commit histories.

Reproduce Error

To reproduce the error, we will work on the following steps.

Clone the remote repository on the local machine.
Delete and recreate the .git folder.
Connect to the remote repository.
Add a new file and commit in the local repository.
Pull from the remote repository.

Here is the list of git commands to complete the above steps.

# Clone the remote repository on the local machine
git clone <URL>

# Delete the .git folder on the local repository.
# Recreate .git folder 
git init

# Connect to the remote repository.
git remote add origin <URL>

# Added the file “2.txt”.
# Commit the file in the local repository
git add .
git commit -m “Added 2.txt”

# Try to pull from the remote repository.
# You will get an error while executing this command
git pull

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

# Try to pull from the remote repository.
git pull

Picture showing the list of commands executed to reproduce the refusing to merge unrelated histories error

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How To Fix The Issue?

At the time of pull, use --allow-unrelated-histories. Use the following command.

git pull --allow-unrelated-histories

Picture showing pulling the data using the git pull --allow-unrelated-histories command

Click to Enlarge

Once you press enter, the following window will appear.

Picture showing a window to enter the comments

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Enter the comment and then write ":wq=" and press enter.

Picture showing the execution of git pull --allow-unrelated-histories command

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Tuesday, June 8, 2021

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