How to get just one file from another branch

Question

I am using git and working on master branch  This branch has a file called app js   I have an experiment branch in which I made a bunch of changes and tons of commits  Now I want to bring all the changes done only to app js from experiment to master branch   How do I do that   Once again I do not want a merge  I just want to bring all the changes in app js from experiment branch to master branch

User · Answer

Supplemental to VonC s and chhh s answers   git show experiment path to relative app js  gt  app js   If your current working directory is relative than just use git show experiment app js  gt  app js   or  git checkout experiment -- app js

User · Answer

How to check out one or more files from another branch or commit hash into your currently-checked-out branch    check out all files in  lt paths gt  from branch  lt branch name gt  git checkout  lt branch name gt  --  lt paths gt   Source  http   nicolasgallagher com git-checkout-specific-files-from-another-branch   See also man git checkout  Examples    Check out  quot somefile c quot  from branch  my branch  git checkout my branch -- somefile c    Check out these 4 files from  my branch  git checkout my branch -- file1 h file1 cpp mydir file2 h mydir file2 cpp    Check out ALL files from my branch which are in   directory  quot path to dir quot  git checkout my branch -- path to dir  If you don t specify  the branch name it is automatically assumed to be HEAD  which is your most-recent commit of the currently-checked-out branch  So  you can also just do this to check out  quot somefile c quot  and have it overwrite any local  uncommitted changes    Check out  quot somefile c quot  from  HEAD   to overwrite any local  uncommitted   changes git checkout -- somefile c    Or check out a whole folder from  HEAD   git checkout -- some directory  See also   I show some more of these examples of git checkout -- in my answer here  Who is  quot us quot  and who is  quot them quot  according to Git

User · Answer

git checkout master                 first get back to master git checkout experiment -- app js   then copy the version of app js                                      from branch  quot experiment quot   See also git how to undo changes of one file   Update August 2019  Git 2 23 With the new git switch and git restore commands  that would be  git switch master git restore --source experiment -- app js  By default  only the working tree is restored  If you want to update the index as well  meaning restore the file content  and add it to the index in one command   git restore --source experiment --staged --worktree -- app js   shorter  git restore -s experiment -SW -- app js   As Jakub Narebski mentions in the comments  git show experiment path to app js  gt  path to app js  works too  except that  as detailed in the SO question  quot How to retrieve a single file from specific revision in Git  quot   you need to use the full path from the root directory of the repo  Hence the path to app js used by Jakub in his example  As Frosty mentions in the comment   you will only get the most recent state of app js  But  for git checkout or git show  you can actually reference any revision you want  as illustrated in the SO question  quot git checkout revision of a file in git gui quot     git show  REVISION  FILENAME   git checkout  REVISION --  FILENAME  would be the same is  FILENAME is a full path of a versioned file   REVISION can be as shown in git rev-parse  experiment  yesterday  app js   app js as it was yesterday  experiment  app js              app js on the first commit parent experiment  2  app js           app js two commits ago  and so on  schmijos adds in the comments   you also can do this from a stash  git checkout stash -- app js  This is very useful if you re working on two branches and don t want to commit

User · Answer

If you want the file from a particular commit  any branch    say 06f8251f   git checkout 06f8251f path to file  for example   in windows   git checkout 06f8251f C  A B C D file h

User · Answer

Everything is much simpler  use git checkout for that   Suppose you re on master branch  to get app js from new-feature branch do   git checkout new-feature path to app js     note that there is no leading slash in the path    This will bring you the contents of the desired file  You can  as always  use part of sha1 instead of new-feature branch name to get the file as it was in that particular commit   Note new-feature needs to be a local branch  not a remote one

User · Answer

Or if you want all the files from another branch   git checkout  lt branch name gt  --

User · Answer

git checkout master               -go to the master branch first git checkout  lt your-branch gt  --  lt your-file gt  --copy your file data from your branch   git show  lt your-branch gt  path to  lt your-file gt     Hope this will help you  Please let me know If you have any query

User · Answer

Review the file on github and pull it from there  This is a pragmatic approach which doesn t directly answer the OP  but some have found useful   If the branch in question is on GitHub  then you can navigate to the desired branch and file using any of the many tools that GitHub offers  then click  Raw  to view the plain text  and  optionally  copy and paste the text as desired   I like this approach because it lets you look at the remote file in its entirety before pulling it to your local machine

User · Answer

To restore a file from another branch  simply use the following command from your working branch  git restore -s my-other-branch --   path to file The -s flag is short for source i e  the branch from where you want to pull the file   The chosen answer is very informative but also a bit overwhelming

User · Answer

Another way is to create a patch with the differences and apply it in the master branch For instance  Let s say the last commit before you started working on app js is 00000aaaaa and the commit containg the version you want is 00000bbbbb  The you run this on the experiment branch   git diff 00000aaaaa 00000bbbbb app js  gt    app changes git   This will create a file with all the differences between those two commits for app js that you can apply wherever you want  You can keep that file anywhere outside the project  Then  in master you just run   git apply   app changes git   now you are gonna see the changes in the projects as if you had made them manually

User · Answer

git checkout branch name file name   Example   git checkout master App java   This will not work if your branch name has a period in it    git checkout  fix june  alive html error  pathspec  fix june  did not match any file s  known to git

[git] How to get just one file from another branch

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