Mercurial error: repository is unrelated

mercurial dvcs bitbucket
iamdarrenhall picture iamdarrenhall · Sep 6, 2011 · Viewed 25.2k times · Source

I've just started with Mercurial, I have a 'central' repository on Bitbucket which I cloned onto one machine and made changes and committed and pushed. I then cloned from Bitbucket to another machine committed and pushed which was fine. I then came back to the first machine, made changes committed and attempted to push, but got the error message. What am I doing wrong? Should I have pulled first? How can I resolve the error and push? Any help is appreciated!

Darren.

Answer

Martin Geisler picture Martin Geisler · Sep 6, 2011

A Mercurial repository gets its identity when you make the first commit in it. When you create a new repository on Bitbucket, you create an empty repository with no identity.

When you clone this repository to machine A and make a commit and push it back, then you brand the repository. If you have cloned the repository on the second machine before pushing from the first, then you can end up in the situation you describe.

Please run hg paths on the machine where you cannot push. Then make a separate clone of the repository it says it will push to. Now examine the first changeset in each repository with

hg log -r 0

If the initial changesets are different, then you have two unrelated repositories, as we call it in Mercurial. You can then export the changes you cannot push as patches and import them in the other.

Related questions

What is the Difference Between Mercurial and Git?

I've been using git for some time now on Windows (with msysGit) and I like the idea of distributed source control. Just recently I've been looking at Mercurial (hg) and it looks interesting. However, I can't wrap my head around …

Read More
Mercurial — revert back to old version and continue from there

I'm using Mercurial locally for a project (it's the only repo there's no pushing/pulling to/from anywhere else). To date it's got a linear history. However, the current thing I'm working on I've now realized is a terrible approach …

Read More
Hg: How to do a rebase like git's rebase

In Git I can do this: 1. Start working on new feature: $ git co -b newfeature-123 # (a local feature development branch) do a few commits (M, N, O) master A---B---C \ newfeature-123 M---N---O 2. Pull new changes from upstream master: $ git pull (master …

Read More