Trying to pull files from my Github repository refusing to merge unrelated histories

Question

I m learning git  and I m following the Git community book    Previously  long time ago  I made a public repository on Github  with some files  Now I set up a local Git repository on my current computer  and committed some files  Then I added a remote pointing to my Github page    root osboxes c   git remote add learnc https   github com michaelklachko Learning-C   That seemed to be successful     root osboxes c   git remote show learnc   remote learnc   Fetch URL  https   github com michaelklachko Learning-C   Push  URL  https   github com michaelklachko Learning-C   HEAD branch  master   Remote branch      master tracked   Local ref configured for  git push       master pushes to master  local out of date    Now I want to download the files from my Github repo to my computer  I did this    root osboxes c   git fetch learnc  root osboxes c   git merge learnc master warning  refname  learnc master  is ambiguous  Already up-to-date    However  I don t see any new files in my local directory  How can I get them    I also tried to do this    root osboxes c   git pull learnc master From https   github com michaelklachko Learning-C    branch            master     - gt  FETCH HEAD fatal  refusing to merge unrelated histories   BTW  locally I m on master branch  there are no other branches     root osboxes c   git status On branch master nothing to commit  working directory clean

User · Answer

While I m all for unblocking people s work issues  I don t think  push --force  or  --allow unrelated histories  should be taught to new users as general solutions because they can cause real havoc to a repository when one uses them without understand why things aren t working in the first place   When you have a situation like this where you started with a local repository  and want to make a remote on GitHub to share your work with  there is something to watch out for   When you create the new online repository  there s an option  Initialize this repository with a README    If you read the fine print  it says  Skip this step if you   re importing an existing repository    You may have checked that box   Or similarly  you made an add commit online before you attempted an initial push   What happens is you create a unique commit history in each place and they can t be reconciled without the special allowance mentioned in Nevermore s answer  because git doesn t want you to operate that way    You can follow some of the advice mentioned here  or more simply just don t check that option next time you want to link some local files to a brand new remote  keeping the remote clean for that initial push   Reference  my first experience with git   hub was to run into this same problem and do a lot of learning to understand what had happened and why

User · Answer

git checkout master git merge origin master --allow-unrelated-histories   Resolve conflict  then  git add -A   git commit -m  Upload  git push

User · Answer

Try --allow-unrelated-histories  Like max630 commented  or as explained here Git refusing to merge unrelated histories

User · Answer

Execute the following command   git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories   A merge vim will open  Add some merging message and    Press ESC Press Shift       Press  w  and then press  q     And you are good to go

User · Answer

When I used --allow-unrelated-histories  this command generated too many conflicts  There were conflicts in files which I didn t even work on  To get over the error   Refusing to merge unrelated histories   I used following rebase command   git pull --rebase preserve --allow-unrelated-histories   After this commit the uncommitted changes with a commit message  Finally  run the following command   git rebase --continue   After this  my working copy was up-to-date with the remote copy and I was able to push my changes as before  No more unrelated histories error while pulling

User · Answer

On your branch - say master  pull and allow unrelated histories  git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories   Worked for me

User · Answer

If there is not substantial history on one end  aka if it is just a single readme commit on the github end   I often find it easier to manually copy the readme to my local repo and do a git push -f to make my version the new root commit    I find it is slightly less complicated  doesn t require remembering an obscure flag  and keeps the history a bit cleaner

User · Answer

In my case was facing the same issue  especially the first pull request trying after remotely adding a Git repository  The following error was facing    fatal  refusing to merge unrelated histories on every try   Use the --allow-unrelated-histories command  It works perfectly   git pull origin branchname --allow-unrelated-histories

[git] Trying to pull files from my Github repository: "refusing to merge unrelated histories"

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