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
- anyone 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
.
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
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
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
master
instead of HEAD@{2013-02-25}
, if you're on a branch - anyone git log --since='2016-04-28 23:59:59 +0100'
? - anyone :
and before the filename. - anyone 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:
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
gitk REVISION /path/to/file
. This can come in handy when you want to check against a certain version for instance. - anyone sudo apt install gitk
for ubuntu - anyone You can also specify a commit hash
(often also called commit ID
) with the git show
command.
git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file
git log /path/to/file
commit hash
such as commit 06c98...
(06c98... being the commit hash)commit hash
git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file
using the commit hash
of step 3 & the path/to/file
of step 1.Note: adding the ./
when specifying a relative path seems important, i.e. git show b2f8be577166577c59b55e11cfff1404baf63a84:./flight-simulation/src/main/components/nav-horiz.html
.
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
git show <SHA1> --name-only
to get it. - anyone debian
, the addition of ./
does not matter for the pathing. - anyone 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 :)
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
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
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
:
- double colon - between commit-hash and file the commenters mention about the entire file and diff to another older version. - anyone 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.
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
git log -pm
would also show merge commits. - anyone git log -p -- filename.txt
to restrain the history to only the desired file. - anyone WAY 1:
Find commit id with: git reflog
List files from commit git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commitHash>
Example:
git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r d2f9ba4
whered2f9ba4
is commit id from step 1.
Open required file with following command:
git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file
Example:
git show d2f9ba4:Src/Ext/MoreSwiftUI/ListCustom.swift
Src/...
is file path from step 2.
WAY 2:
///////////////
/// WARNING:
/// Ability to lose uncommitted data.
/// Perform commit or save your uncommited files to stash.
///////////////
git reflog
git reset --hard %commit ID%
Example:
git reset --hard c14809fa
WAY 3: ( MacOS, TaoGit - it's free to use )
I prefer this way.
After steps on screenshot below you will have ability to copy all needed data even if commited data is "lost" in commit to detached head
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
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
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
git_root
, git_log_short
and git_log_message_for_commit
are missing. - anyone 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.
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07
None of the previous answers addressed the second possibility mentioned by the OP, which is how to open the results into $EDITOR
.
Most editors on the terminal will accept reading from stdin
if you pass a single dash -
as the filename, which allows piping the output of the git show
command to the command you would use to open the editor.
As a Vim user, I'll use it as an example to clarify. You could do the following:
# The reference to a commit, branch, tag, etc
$ REVISION='...'
$ git show "$REVISION":path/to/file | vim -
One drawback of doing this is that the editor has no good hint of what is the file type you are dealing with and it may have trouble with syntax highlighting, for example. This happens because there is no file extension to look at. From the editor's perspective, it just receives a blob of bytes from stdin
.
In Vim, this can be easily solved by explicitly setting the filetype
:
$ git show "$REVISION":path/to/file.py | vim -c 'set filetype=python' -
Something very useful is to combine git show
with process substitution to compare two historical versions of a file directly using a diff utility (diff
, vimdiff
, etc). The file may have changed in position a lot inside the Git repository or maybe it was deleted for a while and later recreated. These situations give a hard time to Git to show the diff you want, but the following command does the trick:
$ vimdiff <(git show "$REV_0":path/to/file) <(git show "$REV_1":another/path/to/file)
Nice to find something to add to an almost 15 years old question!
Answered 2023-09-21 08:08:07