How to retrieve a single file from a specific revision in Git?

Question

I have a Git repository and I\'d like to see how some files looked a few months ago. I found the revision at that date; it\'s 27cf8e84bb88e24ae4b4b3df2b77aab91a3735d8<

Answer 1

Get the file from a previous commit through checking-out previous commit and copying file.

• Note which branch you are on: git branch
• Checkout the previous commit you want: git checkout 27cf8e84bb88e24ae4b4b3df2b77aab91a3735d8
• Copy the file you want to a temporary location
• Checkout the branch you started from: git checkout theBranchYouNoted
• Copy in the file you placed in a temporary location
• Commit your change to git: git commit -m "added file ?? from previous commit"

Answer 2

This will help you get all deleted files between commits without specifying the path, useful if there are a lot of files deleted.

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=D $commit~1 $commit | xargs git checkout $commit~1

Answer 3

The easiest way is to write:

git show HASH:file/path/name.ext > some_new_name.ext

where:

• HASH is the Git revision SHA-1 hash number
• file/path/name.ext is name of the file you are looking for
• some_new_name.ext is path and name where the old file should be saved

Example

git show 27cf8e84bb88e24ae4b4b3df2b77aab91a3735d8:my_file.txt > my_file.txt.OLD

This will save my_file.txt from revision 27cf8e as a new file with name my_file.txt.OLD

It was tested with Git 2.4.5.

If you want to retrieve deleted file you can use HASH~1 (one commit before specified HASH).

EXAMPLE:

git show 27cf8e84bb88e24ae4b4b3df2b77aab91a3735d8~1:deleted_file.txt > deleted_file.txt

Answer 4

You need to provide the full path to the file:

git show 27cf8e84bb88e24ae4b4b3df2b77aab91a3735d8:full/repo/path/to/my_file.txt