Git: How to find a deleted file in the project commit history?
Once upon a time, there was a file in my project that I would now like to be able to get.
The problem is: I have no idea of when have I deleted it and on which path was it at.
How can I locate the commits of this file when it existed?
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
Could not edit the accepted response so adding it as an answer here,
to restore the file in git, use the following (note the '^' sign just after the SHA)
git checkout <SHA>^ -- /path/to/file