How to find and restore a deleted file in a Git repository

Question

Say I\'m in a Git repository. I delete a file and commit that change. I continue working and make some more commits. Then, I find I need to restore that file.

I know

Answer 1

If you’re insane, use git-bisect. Here's what to do:

git bisect start
git bisect bad
git bisect good 

Now it's time to run the automated test. The shell command '[ -e foo.bar ]' will return 0 if foo.bar exists, and 1 otherwise. The "run" command of git-bisect will use binary search to automatically find the first commit where the test fails. It starts halfway through the range given (from good to bad) and cuts it in half based on the result of the specified test.

git bisect run '[ -e foo.bar ]'

Now you're at the commit which deleted it. From here, you can jump back to the future and use git-revert to undo the change,

git bisect reset
git revert 

or you could go back one commit and manually inspect the damage:

git checkout HEAD^
cp foo.bar /tmp
git bisect reset
cp /tmp/foo.bar .