Find when a file was deleted in Git

Question

I have a Git repository with n commits   I have a file that I need  and that used to be in the repository  and that I suddenly look for and think  Oh  Where d that file go    Is there a  series of  Git command s  that will tell me that  file really needed txt was deleted at commit n-13    In other words  without looking at every individual commit  and knowing that my Git repo has every change of every file  can I quickly find the last commit that HAS that file  so I can get it back

User · Answer

Git log but you need to prefix the path with --

Eg:

dan-mac:test dani$ git log file1.txt
fatal: ambiguous argument 'file1.txt': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.

dan-mac:test dani$ git log -- file1.txt
 commit 0f7c4e1c36e0b39225d10b26f3dea40ad128b976
 Author: Daniel Palacio <danpal@gmail.com>
 Date:   Tue Jul 26 23:32:20 2011 -0500

 foo

User · Answer

Try   git log --stat   grep file

User · Answer

git log --full-history --  file path  shows the changes of a file and works even if the file was deleted  Example  git log --full-history  -- myfile  If you want to see only the last commit  which deleted the file  use -1 in addition to the command above  Example  git log --full-history -1 --  file path   See also my article  Which commit deleted a file

User · Answer

You can find the last commit which deleted file as follows   git rev-list -n 1 HEAD --  file path    Further information is available here

User · Answer

I ve just added a solution here  is there a way in git to list all deleted files in the repository   for finding the commits of deleted files by using a regexp   git log --diff-filter D --summary   sed -n    commit h    some dir    G s  ncommit          1 gp     This returns everything deleted within a directory named some dir  cascading   Any sed regexp there where   some dir   is will do   OSX  thanks to  triplee and  keif   git log --diff-filter D --summary   sed -n -e    commit h  -e         -e G -e  s  ncommit          1 gp  -e

User · Answer

Short answer   git log --full-history -- your file   will show you all commits in your repo s history  including merge commits  that touched your file  The last  top  one is the one that deleted the file   Some explanation   The --full-history flag here is important  Without it  Git performs  history simplification  when you ask it for the log of a file  The docs are light on details about exactly how this works and I lack the grit and courage required to try to figure it out from the source code  but the git-log docs have this much to say      Default mode      Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final state of the tree  Simplest because it prunes some side branches if the end result is the same  i e  merging branches with the same content    This is obviously concerning when the file whose history we want is deleted  since the simplest history explaining the final state of a deleted file is no history  Is there a risk that git log without --full-history will simply claim that the file was never created  Unfortunately  yes  Here s a demonstration   mark lunchbox   example  git init Initialised empty Git repository in  home mark example  git  mark lunchbox   example  touch foo    git add foo    git commit -m  Added foo   master  root-commit  ddff7a7  Added foo  1 file changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 foo mark lunchbox   example  git checkout -b newbranch Switched to a new branch  newbranch  mark lunchbox   example  touch bar    git add bar    git commit -m  Added bar   newbranch 7f9299a  Added bar  1 file changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644 bar mark lunchbox   example  git checkout master Switched to branch  master  mark lunchbox   example  git rm foo    git commit -m  Deleted foo  rm  foo   master 7740344  Deleted foo  1 file changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -   delete mode 100644 foo mark lunchbox   example  git checkout newbranch Switched to branch  newbranch  mark lunchbox   example  git rm bar    git commit -m  Deleted bar  rm  bar   newbranch 873ed35  Deleted bar  1 file changed  0 insertions     0 deletions -   delete mode 100644 bar mark lunchbox   example  git checkout master Switched to branch  master  mark lunchbox   example  git merge newbranch Already up-to-date  Merge made by the  recursive  strategy  mark lunchbox   example  git log -- foo commit 77403443a13a93073289f95a782307b1ebc21162 Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 50 50 2016  0000      Deleted foo  commit ddff7a78068aefb7a4d19c82e718099cf57be694 Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 50 19 2016  0000      Added foo mark lunchbox   example  git log -- bar mark lunchbox   example  git log --full-history -- foo commit 2463e56a21e8ee529a59b63f2c6fcc9914a2b37c Merge  7740344 873ed35 Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 51 36 2016  0000      Merge branch  newbranch   commit 77403443a13a93073289f95a782307b1ebc21162 Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 50 50 2016  0000      Deleted foo  commit ddff7a78068aefb7a4d19c82e718099cf57be694 Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 50 19 2016  0000      Added foo mark lunchbox   example  git log --full-history -- bar commit 873ed352c5e0f296b26d1582b3b0b2d99e40d37c Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 51 29 2016  0000      Deleted bar  commit 7f9299a80cc9114bf9f415e1e9a849f5d02f94ec Author  Mark Amery  Date    Tue Jan 12 22 50 38 2016  0000      Added bar   Notice how git log -- bar in the terminal dump above resulted in literally no output  Git is  simplifying  history down into a fiction where bar never existed  git log --full-history -- bar  on the other hand  gives us the commit that created bar and the commit that deleted it   To be clear  this issue isn t merely theoretical  I only looked into the docs and discovered the --full-history flag because git log -- some file was failing for me in a real repository where I was trying to track a deleted file down  History simplification might sometimes be helpful when you re trying to understand how a currently-existing file came to be in its current state  but when trying to track down a file deletion it s more likely to screw you over by hiding the commit you care about  Always use the --full-history flag for this use case

[git] Find when a file was deleted in Git

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