diff --git a/hggit/compat.py b/hggit/compat.py
index 4fdbf9e19e4a5924cdb36a1b90d459e634ae5b11_aGdnaXQvY29tcGF0LnB5..3392d392bc8ffa75cfcd4133d9f1712e49ecd845_aGdnaXQvY29tcGF0LnB5 100644
--- a/hggit/compat.py
+++ b/hggit/compat.py
@@ -37,6 +37,11 @@
     iteritems = lambda x: x.iteritems()
     itervalues = lambda x: x.itervalues()
 
+try:
+    unicode = unicode
+except NameError:
+    from mercurial.pycompat import unicode
+
 
 def gitvfs(repo):
     """return a vfs suitable to read git related data"""