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This article outlines the steps required to resolve the fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories error in Git. We usually encounter such errors when trying to merge two unrelated Git projects into one branch.

It pops up when the receiving branch has commits, and the clone has incompatible tags.

fatal: common scenarios of refusing to merge unrelated histories

Here are some situations where you may encounter fatal errors: Refusing to merge unrelated histories error in Git.

1. You have a local repository with commits, and you try to pull from an existing remote repository. Since the histories are different, Git doesn't know how to proceed. Hence the error message.
2. Your .git directory is corrupted.
3. When your branches are at different HEAD locations.

解决 fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories

We can resolve the error by allowing unrelated merges. We can do this by adding the --allow-unrelated-histories flag to our pull request as shown below.

$ git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories

Git will allow you to merge branches with unrelated histories. This is easy if your files don't conflict.

The method above is the simplest; however, it is a longer route to the same destination.

First you have to unstage all current commits and stash them. Then you can pull from the remote repository and apply the stash to the new clone.

This makes it easier to deal with merge conflicts when they occur.

To unstage all files from the last commit, use the following command.

$ git reset HEAD~

Run the command below to store the file.

$ git stash

Now that you have a clean working tree, you can run the pull request, after which you will unstash and apply the stashed changes to your working tree. You can run:

$ git stash pop

The above command will apply the stash and discard it. If you want to apply and keep the stash, you can run:

$ git stash apply

That being said, what's the easiest way to avoid this error message?

Avoid pulling remote repositories into local branches that contain commits. If you must, create a new branch and pull and merge the changes manually.

In summary, fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories error occurs when we try to merge branches with different commit histories . We have covered two ways to resolve the error and how to best avoid it.