Restoring a file from Git?

Answer 1

If you need to get a single file out of a commit that is in your repository then git checkout will do it for you. Specifically:

git checkout <sha> <filename>

will retrieve the file <filename> from the commit <sha> into your current working copy. can be any reference to any commit, so it could be a branch name, a tag name, HEAD^^^^, or anything at all like that that you want...

Answer 2

Do you have an uncorrupted copy of the repository anywhere? If so, pull from there to your working directory and then checkout the file. You can do:

git log --since='2009-07-27 23:58' --pretty=oneline -n 1

to get the hash you want and then get the file via:

git checkout <file> <hash>

If you have no uncorrupted working copies of the repository, you might try 'git fsck', but your chance of success is small or zero if files have been lost.