Restore a deleted file in a Git repo

Question

Say I'm in a Git repository. I delete a file and commit that change. I continue working and make some more commits. Then, I find I need to restore that file.

I know I can checkout a file using git checkout HEAD^ foo.bar, but I don't really know when that file was deleted.

1. What would be the quickest way to find the commit that deleted a given filename?
2. What would be the easiest way to get that file back into my working copy?

I'm hoping I don't have to manually browse my logs, checkout the entire project for a given SHA and then manually copy that file into my original project checkout.

Answer 1

Use git-bisect. Here's what to do:

git bisect start
git bisect bad
git bisect good <some commit where you know the file existed>

Now it's time to run the automated test. The shell command '[ -e foo.bar ]' will return 0 if foo.bar exists, and 1 otherwise. The "run" command of git-bisect will use binary search to automatically find the first commit where the test fails. It starts halfway through the range given (from good to bad) and cuts it in half based on the result of the specified test.

git bisect run '[ -e foo.bar ]'

Now you're at the commit which deleted it. From here, you can jump back to the future and use git-revert to undo the change,

git bisect reset
git revert <the offending commit>

or you could go back one commit and manually inspect the damage:

git checkout HEAD^
cp foo.bar /tmp
git bisect reset
cp /tmp/foo.bar .

Answer 2

1. Use git log --diff-filter=D --summary to get all the commits which have deleted files and the files deleted;
2. Use git revert $commit to revert that particular commit.

Answer 3

And what if commit where my file was deleted contains several deleted files but I need to restore the only one. All other should stay deleted. As I understand all deleted in commit files will be restored after revert. Is there some way to restore particular file in commit?

Answer 4

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn't in the HEAD commit, this commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file_path>

Then checkout the version at the commit before.

git checkout <deleting_commit>^ -- <file_path>

Or in one command, if $file is the file in question.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")^ -- "$file"