Git How to find a deleted file in the project commit history

Question

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 it was   How can I locate the commits of this file when it existed

User · Answer

Amber gave correct answer  Just one more addition  if you do not know the exact path of the file you can use wildcards  This worked for me   git log --all --    thefile

User · Answer

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 --  lt path-to-file gt    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  lt SHA gt  --  lt path-to-file gt    Or restore it into your working copy with   git checkout  lt SHA gt   --  lt path-to-file gt   Note the caret symbol      which gets the checkout prior to the one identified  because at the moment of  lt SHA gt  commit the file is deleted  we need to look at the previous commit to get the deleted file s contents

User · Answer

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   gt  cd  lt project-root gt    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  amp  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   gt  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   gt  git checkout bd8374c  -- full path to MyFile js

User · Answer

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  gt  like   git show COMMIT ID -- FILE PATH  gt  deleted diff

User · Answer

Try using one of the viewers  such as gitk so that you can browse around the history to find that half remembered file   use gitk --all if needed for all branches

User · Answer

Summary    Step 1   You search your file full path in history of deleted files git log --diff-filter D --summary   grep filename   Step 2   You restore your file from commit before it was deleted  restore        filepath        last commit   git log --all --full-history --  filepath   grep commit   head -1   awk   print  2  exit      echo  Restoring file from commit before  last commit    git checkout  last commit  --  filepath    restore my file path

User · Answer

Below is a simple command  where a dev or a git user can pass a deleted file name from the repository root directory and get the history   git log --diff-filter D --summary   grep filename   awk   print  4  exit     xargs git log --all --    If anybody  can improve the command  please do

User · Answer

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  lt SHA gt   --  path to file

User · Answer

Here is my solution   git log --all --full-history --oneline --  lt RELATIVE FILE PATH gt  git checkout  lt COMMIT SHA gt   --  lt RELATIVE FILE PATH gt

User · Answer

If you prefer to see the size of all deleted file as well as the associated SHA git log --all --stat --diff-filter D --oneline  add a -p to see the contents too git log --all --stat --diff-filter D -p  To narrow down to any file simply pipe to grep and search for file name git log --all --stat --diff-filter D --oneline   grep someFileName  You might also like this one if you know where the file is git log --all --full-history -- someFileName

[git] Git: How to find a deleted file in the project commit history?

Examples related to git