There isn t anything to compare Nothing to compare branches are entirely different commit histories

Question

I have a CMS theme installed on my machine  I m tracking changes to it via git and decided to back it up on GitHub so I could share those changes   The theme as provided is also available on GitHub  On my machine I have added this as a remote upstream  Now I can easily see the changes between my master and the remote upstream by using the following command   git diff --color master upstream number   If I could add the remote upstream on GitHub I could easily share these changes  Is it possible to set this relationship on GitHub   I have tried the following   git push -u origin upstreambranch   which adds an upstreambranch to the master on GitHub  However trying to compare both branches doesn t work  the result I get on GitHub is that   There isn t anything to compare   Is there an alternative way to compare these

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I don t think we have same case here  but still someone else may find it helpful   When similar error occurred to me  it was going to be the first merge and first commit  There was nothing in on-line repository  Therefore  there was no code on git-hub  to compare with   I simply deleted the empty repository and created new one with same name  And then there was no error

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I had mine solved by overriding the branch   My case  I wanted to override whatever code is in the develop with version 2    delete the local copy of conflicting branch     git checkout version 2 git branch -D develop    checkout a fresh branch from the version 2 and force push to git    git checkout -b  develop  git push origin  develop    I didn t need to rebase  But in my case  I didn t need to take code from my old code

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From the experiment branch   git rebase master git push -f origin  lt experiment-branch gt    This creates a common commit history to be able to compare both branches

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I solved that problem  In my case when i did    git clone    in one directory of my choice without do    git init    inside of that repository  Then I moved in to the cloned repository  where already have a     git     is a git repository i e  do not need a    git init     and finally I started do my changes or anything   It probably doesn   t solve the problem but shows you how to avoid it   The command git clone should be a    cd    command imbued if no submodule exists

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Terminology First  let s get some terminology out of the way    upstream  lt   The remote git repo  likely whose master or release branch is in production  forked-repo  lt   The remote  experimental git repo   https   docs github com en github getting-started-with-github fork-a-repo  also known as  quot origin quot   local repo  lt   The files and directories that you work with on your local workstaion  which you likely got by running a git clone my-forked-repo git command local index  lt   Also known as your local git  quot stage quot   i e   where you stage your files before pushing them to you remote repo  Github workflow process Next  let s talk about the process of getting your changes to the upstream repo  The process is generally to work on a feature branch and then push said branch  and open a Pull Request  either to your forked-repo s master branch or to the upstream s master branch Create a feature branch by running git checkout -b FEATURE BRANCH NAME Add delete modify files project files  Add files by running git add   Commit your files to your index by running git commit -m My commit message  Push your staged files by running git push origin FEATURE BRANCH NAME Solution for entirely different commit histories The master and upstreambranch are entirely different commit histories message can occur when you ve forked a git repository and have changed your git history  For example  if you fork a repo and pull your forked repo to work on it locally    If then you decide to rewrite the entire application and then decide it s a good idea to deleting all existing files  including the forked-repo s  git directory  You add new files and directories to recreate your app and also recreate your  git directory with git init command  Now  your application works great with your new files and you want to get it merged into the upstream repo  However  when you push your changes you get that  quot    entirely different commit histories    quot  error message  You ll see that your original git commit will be different in your new local directory and if in your remote fork  as well as your upstream   Check this out by running this command in your current directory  git log --reverse master   Then running the following  pushd   mktemp -d   git clone https   github com my-forking-username my-forked-repo git  git log --reverse master  popd You must fix your local  git repo to match your remote my-forked-repo if you want to push your commits and subsequently perform a pull request  in hopes of merging your new updates to the upstream master branch   git clone https   github com my-forking-username my-forked-repo git cd my-forked-repo git checkout -b my-new-files-branch-name   Delete all files and directories except for the  git directory git add   git commit -m Remove old files    Copy your new files to this my-forked-repo directory git add   git commit -m Add new files  git push origin my-new-files-branch-name  Create a PR on GitHub and request to merge your my-new-files-branch-name branch in your my-forked-repo into master  Note  The  quot    entirely different commit histories    quot  error message can also occur in non-forked repos for the same reasons and can be fixed with the same solution above

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The Short Answer  It looks like GitHub won t let you compare the branches because they don t actually share any of the same history at all  even though they may share much of the same files and code   Here is a screenshot of the temporary fork I made of your repo  where I tried to compare master with the upstreambranch  like you described  Notice the error message     It says      There isn t anything to compare       master and upstreambranch are entirely different commit histories    The Long Answer  You probably downloaded the original source and added it to a completely new repo instead of cloning the original repo  right  Doing that will make it so that the history of your repo will be completely different from the history of the original repo  since your new repo won t have any of the same commits with the same sha IDs   You can see that by doing a reverse log of your master branch and the upstreambranch     Your first commit  see commit sha git log --reverse master commit c548d7b1b16b0350d7fbdb3ff1cfedcb38051397    lt    HERE Author  Padraic Stack  lt padraic stack nuim ie gt  Date    Wed Apr 2 15 11 28 2014  0100      First commit of everything    First commit sha of the original repo git log --reverse upstreambranch commit 105a12817234033c45b4dc7522ff3103f473a862    lt    THERE Author  Jeremy Boggs  lt jeremy clioweb org gt  Date    Mon Feb 22 16 00 53 2010  0000      Creates repo directories for the Seasons theme    Solutions  If you redo your commits on top of the original history  you should then be able to compare the branches  There are several different ways that you can redo your commits  including  git rebase --onto   and  git cherry-pick   You also can redo each commit manually  if you have to

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I had an issue where I was pushing to my remote repo from a local repo that didn t match up with history of remote  This is what worked for me   I cloned my repo locally so I knew I was working with fresh copy of repo   git clone Your REPO URL HERE git   Switch to the branch you are trying to get into the remote   git checkout Your BRANCH NAME HERE   Add the remote of the original   git remote add upstream Your REMOTE REPO URL HERE git   Do a git fetch and git pull   git fetch --all  git pull upstream Your BRANCH NAME HERE   If you have merge conflicts  resolve them with  git mergetool kdiff3    or other merge tool of your choice   Once conflicts are resolved and saved  Commit and push changes   Now go to the gitub com repo of the original and attempt to create a pull request  You should have option to create pull request and not see the  Nothing to compare  branches are entirely different commit histories  Note  You may need to choose compare across forks for your pull request

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You can force update your master branch as follows  git checkout upstreambranch   git branch master upstreambranch -f     git checkout master   git push origin master -f  For the ones who have problem to merge into main branch  Which is the new default one in Github  you can use the following  git checkout master   git branch main master -f     git checkout main   git push origin main -f  The following command will force both branches to have the same history  git branch  Branch1   Branch2  -f

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A more simple approach where you can t mingle with the master   Consider i have master and JIRA-1234 branch and when i am trying to merge JIRA-1234 to master i am getting the above issue so please follow below steps -   From JIRA-1234 cut a branch JIRA-1234-rebase  Its a temp branch and can have any name  I have taken JIRA-1234-rebase to be meaningful    git checkout JIRA-1234  git checkout -b JIRA-1234-rebase The above command will create a new branch JIRA-1234-rebase and will checkout it  Now we will rebase our master   git rebase master  This is executed in the same branch JIRA-1234-rebase  You will see a window showing the commit history from first commit till the last commit on JIRA-1234-rebase  So if we have 98 commits then it will rebase them 1 by 1 and you will see something like 1 98   Here we just need to pick the commit we want so if you want this commit then don t do anything and just HIT Esc then  q  and HIT ENTER  There would be some changes in case of conflict and you need to resolve this conflict and then add the files by   git add  lt FILE NAME gt   Now do git rebase continue it will take you to rebase 2 98 and similarly you have to go through all the 98 commits and resolve all of them and remeber we need to add the files in each commit  Finally you can now push these commits and then raise Pull Request by   git push or git push origin JIRA-1234-rebase

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I got this error message  because I was migrating an application from SVN to GitHub and it s not enough to invoke a git init in the location of the source code checked out from SVN  but you need to invoke a git svn clone  in order to have all the commit history  This way the two source codes on GitHub will have a mutual history and I was able to open pull requests

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This looks like undesirable behavior on github s part  but it s fairly easy to fix   What you want to do is to rebase your branch on a reasonable  any reasonable  commit in the existing history   What you can do is to fetch the github repo and find which tree in its history is most similar to the one you started with   Start this way   git remote add github u   r l git fetch github  myroot  git rev-list master --max-parents 0  root tree  git rev-parse  myroot  tree    github base  git log --pretty  H   T github master   sed -n  s  root tree  p       With any luck  that will find you a commit in the github history that has the exact tree you started with   Assuming it does    git rebase --onto  github base  myroot master    and you re done     If that doesn t find a matching tree  you get to find a nearest approximation   Here s one way to get a rough estimate of the differences   git log --pretty  echo  H   git diff-tree -p -b -U0   myroot    T wc -l   github master     sh   which will count the lines in a minimized diff between the tree of each commit in the github master history and your root tree   It seems reasonable to hope for a nice small difference  you could eyeball the actual diffs on it before calling that the github base commit and doing the rebase above

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This happened with me yesterday cause I downloaded the code from original repo and try to pushed it on my forked repo  spend so much time on searching for solving  Unable to push error  and pushed it forcefully   Solution   Simply Refork the repo by deleting previous one and clone the repo from forked repo to the new folder   Replace the file with old one in new folder and push it to repo and do a new pull request

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I solve my issue using these commands  git checkout  BRANCH     git branch master  BRANCH  -f    git checkout master    git push origin master -f

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If you know from which commit issue started  you can reset your branch to that commit and then merge them

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I found that none of the answers provided actually worked for me  what actually worked for me is to do   git push --set-upstream origin  BRANCHNAME    After creating a new branch  then it gets tracked properly    I have Git 2 7 4

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Top guy is probably right that you downloaded instead of cloning the repo at start   Here is a easy solution without getting too technical    In a new editor window  clone your repo in another directory  Make a new branch  Then copy from your your edited editor window into your new repo by copy paste    Make sure that all your edits are copied over by looking at your older github branch

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I had a similar situation  where my master branch and the develop branch I was trying to merge had different commit histories  None of the above solutions worked for me  What did the trick was  Starting from master  git branch new branch git checkout new branch git merge develop --allow-unrelated-histories  Now in the new branch  there are all the things from develop and I can easily merge into master  or create a pull request  as they now share the same commit hisotry

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I wanted to copy commit history of  quot master quot  branch  amp  overwrite the commit history of  quot main quot  branch   The steps are -  git checkout master git branch main master -f git checkout main git push  To delete master branch - a  Locally -  git checkout main git branch -d master  b  Globally -  git push origin --delete master  Do Upvote it

[git] There isn't anything to compare. Nothing to compare, branches are entirely different commit histories

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