How can I reset or revert a file to a specific revision?

Question

I have made some changes to a file which has been committed a few times as part of a group of files, but now want to reset/revert the changes on it back to a previous versio

Answer 1

Assuming the hash of the commit you want is c5f567:

git checkout c5f567 -- file1/to/restore file2/to/restore

The git checkout man page gives more information.

If you want to revert to the commit before c5f567, append ~1 (where 1 is the number of commits you want to go back, it can be anything):

git checkout c5f567~1 -- file1/to/restore file2/to/restore

As a side note, I've always been uncomfortable with this command because it's used for both ordinary things (changing between branches) and unusual, destructive things (discarding changes in the working directory).