How do I "git blame" a deleted line?
Just to complete Cascabel's answer:
git log --full-history -S <string> path/to/file
I had the same problem as mentioned here, but it turned out that the line was missing, because a merge commit from a branch got reverted and then merged back into it, effectively removing the line in question. The --full-history flag prevents skipping those commits.
If you know the contents of the line, this is an ideal use case for:
git log -S <string> path/to/file
which shows you commits which introduce or remove an instance of that string. There's also the -G<regex> which does the same thing with regular expressions! See man git-log and search for the -G and -S options, or pickaxe (the friendly name for these features) for more information.
The -S option is actually mentioned in the header of the git-blame manpage too, in the description section, where it gives an example using git log -S....
git blame --reverse can get you close to where the line is deleted. But it actually doesn't point to the revision where the line is deleted. It points to the last revision where the line was present. Then if the following revision is a plain commit, you are lucky and you got the deleting revision. OTOH, if the following revision is a merge commit, then things can get a little wild.
As part of the effort to create difflame I tackled this very problem so if you already have Python installed on your box and you are willing to give it a try, then don't wait any longer and let me know how it goes.
https://github.com/eantoranz/difflame
I think what you really want is
git blame --reverse START..END filename
From the manpage:
Walk history forward instead of backward. Instead of showing the revision in which a line appeared, this shows the last revision in which a line has existed. This requires a range of revisions like START..END where the path to blame exists in START.
With git blame reverse, you can find the last commit the line appeared in. You still need to get the commit that comes after.
You can use the following command to show a reversed git log. The first commit shown will be the last time that line appears, and the next commit will be when it is changed or removed.
git log --reverse --ancestry-path COMMIT^..master