Is there a command in Git to see (either dumped to stdout, or in $PAGER
or $EDITOR
) a particular version of a particular file?
git checkout <sha1-of-the-commit-you-need>
, afterwards, git checkout HEAD
You can use git show
with a path from the root of the repository (./
or ../
for relative pathing):
$ git show REVISION:path/to/file
Replace REVISION
with your actual revision (could be a Git commit SHA, a tag name, a branch name, a relative commit name, or any other way of identifying a commit in Git)
For example, to view the version of file <repository-root>/src/main.c
from 4 commits ago, use:
$ git show HEAD~4:src/main.c
Git for Windows requires forward slashes even in paths relative to the current directory. For more information, check out the man page for git-show
.
Doing this by date looks like this if the commit happened within the last 90 days:
git show HEAD@{2013-02-25}:./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt
Note that HEAD@{2013-02-25}
means "where HEAD was on 2013-02-25" in this repository (using the reflog), not "the last commit before 2013-02-25 in this branch in history".
This is important! It means that, by default, this method only works for history within the last 90 days. Otherwise, you need to do this:
git show $(git rev-list -1 --before="2013-02-26" HEAD):./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt
master
instead of HEAD@{2013-02-25}
, if you're on a branch
git log --since='2016-04-28 23:59:59 +0100'
?
:
and before the filename.
If you like GUIs, you can use gitk:
start gitk with: gitk /path/to/file Choose the revision in the top part of the screen, e.g. by description or date. By default, the lower part of the screen shows the diff for that revision, (corresponding to the "patch" radio button). To see the file for the selected revision: Click on the "tree" radio button. This will show the root of the file tree at that revision. Drill down to your file.
gitk REVISION /path/to/file
. This can come in handy when you want to check against a certain version for instance.
sudo apt install gitk
for ubuntu
You can also specify a commit hash
(often also called commit ID
) with the git show
command.
In a nutshell
git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file
Step by step
Show the log of all the changes for a given file with git log /path/to/file In the list of changes shown, it shows the commit hash such as commit 06c98... (06c98... being the commit hash) Copy the commit hash Run the command git show
Note: adding the ./
when specifying a relative path seems important, i.e. git show b2f8be577166577c59b55e11cfff1404baf63a84:./flight-simulation/src/main/components/nav-horiz.html
.
git show <SHA1> --name-only
to get it.
debian
, the addition of ./
does not matter for the pathing.
In addition to Jim Hunziker's answer,
you can export the file from the revision as,
git show HEAD@{2013-02-25}:./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt > old_fileInCurrentDirectory.txt
Hope this helps :)
To quickly see the differences with older revisions of a file:
git show -1 filename.txt > to compare against the last revision of file git show -2 filename.txt > to compare against the 2nd last revision git show -3 fielname.txt > to compare against the last 3rd last revision
:
- double colon - between commit-hash and file the commenters mention about the entire file and diff to another older version.
git log -p
will show you not just the commit logs but also the diff of each commit (except merge commits). Then you can press /
, enter filename and press enter
. Press n
or p
to go to the next/previous occurrence. This way you will not just see the changes in the file but also the commit information.
git log -pm
would also show merge commits.
git log -p -- filename.txt
to restrain the history to only the desired file.
WAY 1: (I prefer this way, no ability to lose uncommitted data)
Find commit id with: git reflog List files from commit git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r
WAY 2: (Ability to lose uncommitted data)
Find commit id with: git reflog Make hard reset to this commit: git reset --hard %commit ID% Example: git reset --hard c14809fa Make necessary changes and do a new commit into required branch
You can use a script like this to dump all the versions of a file to separate files:
e.g.
git_dump_all_versions_of_a_file.sh path/to/somefile.txt
Get the script here as an answer to another similar question
git_root
, git_log_short
and git_log_message_for_commit
are missing.
Helper to fetch multiple files from a given revision
When trying to resolve merge conflicts, this helper is very useful:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import argparse
import os
import subprocess
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('revision')
parser.add_argument('files', nargs='+')
args = parser.parse_args()
toplevel = subprocess.check_output(['git', 'rev-parse', '--show-toplevel']).rstrip().decode()
for path in args.files:
file_relative = os.path.relpath(os.path.abspath(path), toplevel)
base, ext = os.path.splitext(path)
new_path = base + '.old' + ext
with open(new_path, 'w') as f:
subprocess.call(['git', 'show', '{}:./{}'.format(args.revision, path)], stdout=f)
Usage:
git-show-save other-branch file1.c path/to/file2.cpp
Outcome: the following contain the alternate versions of the files:
file1.old.c
path/to/file2.old.cpp
This way, you keep the file extension so your editor won't complain, and can easily find the old file just next to the newer one.
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