Mercurial error: repository is unrelated

Question

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 1

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.

Answer 2

If you're pretty sure the push path is correct, it may be worth it to just export your changes to patches from the problem repo, clone again from Bitbucket and then import the patches into the new repo. This will either just work or reveal a bad/corrupted commit.