Git: How to find a deleted file in the project commit history?
If you do not know the exact path you may use
git log --all --full-history -- "**/thefile.*"
If you know the path the file was at, you can do this:
git log --all --full-history -- <path-to-file>
This should show a list of commits in all branches which touched that file. Then, you can find the version of the file you want, and display it with...
git show <SHA> -- <path-to-file>
Or restore it into your working copy with:
git checkout <SHA>^ -- <path-to-file>
Note the caret symbol (^
), which gets the checkout prior to the one identified, because at the moment of <SHA>
commit the file is deleted, we need to look at the previous commit to get the deleted file's contents
Get a list of the deleted files and copy the full path of the deleted file
git log --diff-filter=D --summary | grep delete
Execute the next command to find commit id of that commit and copy the commit id
git log --all -- FILEPATH
Show diff of deleted file
git show COMMIT_ID -- FILE_PATH
Remember, you can write output to a file using >
like
git show COMMIT_ID -- FILE_PATH > deleted.diff
Suppose you want to recover a file called MyFile
, but are uncertain of its path (or its extension, for that matter):
Preliminary: Avoid confusion by stepping to the git root
A nontrivial project may have multiple directories with similar or identical filenames.
> cd <project-root>
Find the full path
git log --diff-filter=D --summary | grep delete | grep MyFile
delete mode 100644 full/path/to/MyFile.js
full/path/to/MyFile.js
is the path & file you're seeking.
Determine all the commits that affected that file
git log --oneline --follow -- full/path/to/MyFile.js
bd8374c Some helpful commit message
ba8d20e Another prior commit message affecting that file
cfea812 The first message for a commit in which that file appeared.
Checkout the file
If you choose the first-listed commit (the last chronologically, here bd8374c), the file will not be found, since it was deleted in that commit.
> git checkout bd8374c -- full/path/to/MyFile.js
`error: pathspec 'full/path/to/MyFile.js' did not match any file(s) known to git.`
Just select the preceding (append a caret) commit:
> git checkout bd8374c^ -- full/path/to/MyFile.js