How can I view an old version of a file with Git?

Question

Is there a command in Git to see (either dumped to stdout, or in $PAGER or $EDITOR) a particular version of a particular file?

Multicolor

How to get a copy of an older version of a file in a git repository? – Instinctive

If you came to this question because you want to check an older version of a binary file (e.g. an image), then better to do a checkout to the old commit, see what you need to see, and then come back to the HEAD. For that, do git checkout <sha1-of-the-commit-you-need>, afterwards, git checkout HEAD – Quantity

Answer 1

You can use git show with a path from the root of the repository (./ or ../ for relative pathing):

$ git show REVISION:path/to/file

Replace REVISION with your actual revision (a Git commit SHA, tag name, branch name, relative commit name, or any other way of identifying a commit in Git).

For example, to view the version of file <repository-root>/src/main.c from 4 commits ago, use:

$ git show HEAD~4:src/main.c

Git for Windows requires forward slashes even in paths relative to the current directory. For more information, check out the man page for git-show.

Serna

That doesn't actually seem to work -- did you try it? For "git show HEAD:path/to/file.c", I get an "ambiguous argument" error. – Multicolor

And if I just do "git-show path/to/file.c", the command succeeds with no output. – Multicolor

With what version of git? The other way to do it is with git cat-file given the blob ID (which you can find with ls-tree, but that's the hard way). – Knew

Has to be the complete path, from the top of the git repo – Weil

If you're on windows, it might be a path separator thing; if I do git show HEAD:dir\subdir\file, I get the anbiguous argument. If I do git show HEAD:dir/subdir/file, it works as expected. – Schild

The path you must provide after the : is from the root of the git repository. (this was given below as an answer but I think it was intended as a comment on this answer) – Countryman

If you want to see it in a Vim split so that they scroll together, I wrote a short blog post showing how to do that. – Cottonmouth

mercurial can update the entire repo to previous version.. through update command. any simillar way in git to temporarily switch to previous revision?? – Stratosphere

@ashishsony: Yes, you can use git checkout <revision>. – Serna

what happens to the changes im doing in the working dir?? any way to keep them intact and get them back once i am back to head revision?Thanks. – Stratosphere

Thanks! What a useful command. I was painfully and inefficiently trying to copy and paste and reformat my old source code from the diff file. – Telencephalon

you can use git log -- [filename] to look at revisions – Finisterre

You can also redirect git show into vim using (commit):(path to file) | vim -. I find this much better than using the less/more that is used by default. – Unbridled

For some reason, the only thing that appears to work for me is git show <commit>:file Everything else just gives the most recent version. – Benson

You said "show the 4th last commit of the file", but did you really mean "show the file as it was in the 4th last commit"? – Gotthard

These instructions do not work in my case. It can locate the file on disk but says it isn't in the provided commit; however, I got the commit sha from git blame, so it must be in the commit. – Gannet

The HEAD:~<n> syntax does NOT work as expected. It does not show the n'th previous revision of the file src/main.c. It show the content of that file on the n'th previous commit to the current branch. Unless the file src/main.c was modified on every commit in the branch's history, this will not produce the expected result. – Baxie

REVISION can be a commit hash. See my answer: https://mcmap.net/q/11538/-how-can-i-view-an-old-version-of-a-file-with-git – Supposed

git-show is great. Can I toggle on line numbers when using it on command line? – Stalinism

To add onto the answer - git-show doesn't give you line numbers. If you want line numbers, try git show <commit>:<file> | less -N – Stalinism

Instead of having to provide the path from the root of the repo, you can use a relative path if you start it with a . for example: git show HEAD:./subdir/main.c > foo. This works in recent versions of git (tested in git 2.8.3 on CentOS 7) – Foreground

@MichaelDausmann, I have added a series of patches to a file using git add -p. Is there a way to see the entire file as it is in the index, before I commit it? – Aerification

Does not work, I get fatal: Invalid object name 'REVISION'. – Pyrolysis

@Black: Replace REVISION with your actual revision (could be a Git commit SHA, a tag name, a branch name, a relative commit name, or any other way of identifying a commit in Git). – Serna

@mipadi, does not work I tried : "git show 717fe60db378e7052247fa5de33e50bce59e2e85:"app\Models\Selenium.php" But there is no output – Pyrolysis

@Black: Is that a path in your repository? A lot of things could be going wrong here. – Serna

Did not want to upvote this answer as it now has 1337 upvotes. Did it anyway :) – Anhanhalt

This works for me. I get the output in a terminal. Is there a way to send this to a text file? – Heine

@Diego: Redirect the output to a file: git show REVISION:path/to/file > path/to/file. – Serna

Using git for years yet still I have to look this up every time, anyone have a mnemonic for it? The obvious git show <commit> -- <filename> gives a diff, whilst git show --help is overly verbose. Then I have to come back here. There's a reason it's called git. – Rudderhead

Doesn't work. Doesn't go to stdout. Instead it puts me in less. Diego has the answer. – Infracostal

@gr5: Pass --no-pager to Git if you don't want to use less. (This works with any Git command.) – Serna

Interesting that git show <ref>:<path> is different from git show <ref> -- <path>. – Oversold

like @Pyrolysis said 6 years ago git show REVISION:src/.... gives: fatal: invalid object name 'REVISION'. – Precondemn

@Precondemn Replace REVISION with whatever revision (commit SHA, tag, branch name, relative commit string, etc.) you want to show (as written in the answer). – Serna

Answer 2

Doing this by date looks like this if the commit happened within the last 90 days:

git show HEAD@{2013-02-25}:./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt

Note that HEAD@{2013-02-25} means "where HEAD was on 2013-02-25" in this repository (using the reflog), not "the last commit before 2013-02-25 in this branch in history".

This is important! It means that, by default, this method only works for history within the last 90 days. Otherwise, you need to do this:

git show $(git rev-list -1 --before="2013-02-26" HEAD):./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt

Collinear

This command is useful with master instead of HEAD@{2013-02-25}, if you're on a branch – Claudetta

Can you include the time, à la git log --since='2016-04-28 23:59:59 +0100'? – Hiett

The fact this syntax uses the reflog is important and should be highlighted strongly, because the reflog does not contain all commits. See blog.endpoint.com/2014/05/git-checkout-at-specific-date.html – Dryad

Something which I missed: there cannot be a space after the colon : and before the filename. – Bridal

@AliceHeaton This cannot be stressed enough. (Thanks !) – Katydid

@AliceHeaton - updated (4 years later, haha!) – Collinear

Answer 3

If you like GUIs, you can use gitk:

1. start gitk with:

   gitk /path/to/file
   

2. Choose the revision in the top part of the screen, e.g. by description or date. By default, the lower part of the screen shows the diff for that revision, (corresponding to the "patch" radio button).

3. To see the file for the selected revision:

   • Click on the "tree" radio button. This will show the root of the file tree at that revision.
   • Drill down to your file.

Chatterer

This also works with tig, which is a curses git repo viewer. – Kayser

@Paul Slocum: May be because this command is not a conventional command, not the built-in of git. I think this command only work for Windows. – Aestheticism

Note this only seems to work if you start from the root of your git repository. – Reynaldoreynard

If you want to check against a certain revision with gitk you could also use this shortcut: gitk REVISION /path/to/file. This can come in handy when you want to check against a certain version for instance. – Kiernan

sudo apt install gitk for ubuntu – Darwin

Answer 4

You can also specify a commit hash (often also called commit ID) with the git show command.

---

In a nutshell

git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file

---

Step by step

1. Show the log of all the changes for a given file with git log /path/to/file
2. In the list of changes shown, it shows the commit hash such as commit 06c98... (06c98... being the commit hash)
3. Copy the commit hash
4. Run the command git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file using the commit hashof step 3 & the path/to/file of step 1.

Note: adding the ./ when specifying a relative path seems important, i.e. git show b2f8be577166577c59b55e11cfff1404baf63a84:./flight-simulation/src/main/components/nav-horiz.html.

Supposed

in case you don't know path to file, use git show <SHA1> --name-only to get it. – Lateen

this command op - even auto completes from memory - tested on a deleted directory... can't get more op than that gg – Ito

in debian, the addition of ./ does not matter for the pathing. – Gerrilee

Answer 5

To quickly see the differences with older revisions of a file:

git show -1 filename.txt > to compare against the last revision of file

git show -2 filename.txt > to compare against the 2nd last revision

git show -3 fielname.txt > to compare against the last 3rd last revision

Warner

Those commands show the differences with the current version for me but not show the entire file. – Terchie

It's important to notice that this answer matches the question "How to show differences to given file in recent commits?" instead of "How can I view an old version of a file with Git?" the the original question asks. – Event

The difference is about the : - double colon - between commit-hash and file the commenters mention about the entire file and diff to another older version. – Gerrilee

Answer 6

In addition to Jim Hunziker's answer,

you can export the file from the revision as,

git show HEAD@{2013-02-25}:./fileInCurrentDirectory.txt > old_fileInCurrentDirectory.txt

Hope this helps :)

Gibbons

Answer 7

git log -p will show you not just the commit logs but also the diff of each commit (except merge commits). Then you can press /, enter filename and press enter. Press n or p to go to the next/previous occurrence. This way you will not just see the changes in the file but also the commit information.

Drowse

Looks like git log -pm would also show merge commits. – Drowse

You can also run git log -p -- filename.txt to restrain the history to only the desired file. – Terchie

Answer 8

WAY 1:

1. Find commit id with: git reflog

2. List files from commit git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commitHash>

   Example:

   git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r d2f9ba4
   where d2f9ba4 is commit id from step 1.

3. Open required file with following command:

   git show <commitHash>:/path/to/file

   Example:

   git show d2f9ba4:Src/Ext/MoreSwiftUI/ListCustom.swift
Src/... is file path from step 2.

---

WAY 2:

///////////////
/// WARNING: 
/// Ability to lose uncommitted data. 
/// Perform commit or save your uncommited files to stash.
///////////////

1. Find commit id with: git reflog
2. Make hard reset to this commit: git reset --hard %commit ID%

Example:

git reset --hard c14809fa

3. Make necessary changes and do a new commit into required branch

---

WAY 3: ( MacOS, TaoGit - it's free to use )

I prefer this way.

After steps on screenshot below you will have ability to copy all needed data even if commited data is "lost" in commit to detached head

Whopping

WARNING: Please be careful with the second method as you will lose all uncommited changes when you do a hard reset! – Virga

yes, this is ok with hard reset. that's because of reset is"hard" but not "soft". But you need to do hard because of possibilities of conflicts. – Whopping

Answer 9

You can use a script like this to dump all the versions of a file to separate files:

e.g.

git_dump_all_versions_of_a_file.sh path/to/somefile.txt

Get the script here as an answer to another similar question

Apia

git_root, git_log_short and git_log_message_for_commit are missing. – Anticyclone

Good catch! I double posted this answer to 2 different spots, and just removed this one and linked to the other one, where people told me about this before... thanks @Anticyclone ! – Apia

This script is very useful! – Catchment

Answer 10

Helper to fetch multiple files from a given revision

When trying to resolve merge conflicts, this helper is very useful:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import argparse
import os
import subprocess

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('revision')
parser.add_argument('files', nargs='+')
args = parser.parse_args()
toplevel = subprocess.check_output(['git', 'rev-parse', '--show-toplevel']).rstrip().decode()
for path in args.files:
    file_relative = os.path.relpath(os.path.abspath(path), toplevel)
    base, ext = os.path.splitext(path)
    new_path = base + '.old' + ext
    with open(new_path, 'w') as f:
        subprocess.call(['git', 'show', '{}:./{}'.format(args.revision, path)], stdout=f)

GitHub upstream.

Usage:

git-show-save other-branch file1.c path/to/file2.cpp

Outcome: the following contain the alternate versions of the files:

file1.old.c
path/to/file2.old.cpp

This way, you keep the file extension so your editor won't complain, and can easily find the old file just next to the newer one.

Nahshon

@MickeyPerlstein if you can make achieve the same interface with a better implementation, I'm all ears. – Nahshon

maybe i don't understand (and if so, my apologies) but isn't it just : "git show version:./path > new_path " ? – Whithersoever

@MickeyPerlstein hi, yes, my command generates that CLI, but it loops over multiple files and produces output name from input, so you don't have to type too much. Nothing revolutionary of course, but convenient. – Nahshon

Answer 11

None of the previous answers addressed the second possibility mentioned by the OP, which is how to open the results into $EDITOR.

Most editors on the terminal will accept reading from stdin if you pass a single dash - as the filename, which allows piping the output of the git show command to the command you would use to open the editor.

As a Vim user, I'll use it as an example to clarify. You could do the following:

# The reference to a commit, branch, tag, etc
$ REVISION='...' 

$ git show "$REVISION":path/to/file | vim -

One drawback of doing this is that the editor has no good hint of what is the file type you are dealing with and it may have trouble with syntax highlighting, for example. This happens because there is no file extension to look at. From the editor's perspective, it just receives a blob of bytes from stdin.

In Vim, this can be easily solved by explicitly setting the filetype:

$ git show "$REVISION":path/to/file.py | vim -c 'set filetype=python' -

Something very useful is to combine git show with process substitution to compare two historical versions of a file directly using a diff utility (diff, vimdiff, etc). The file may have changed in position a lot inside the Git repository or maybe it was deleted for a while and later recreated. These situations give a hard time to Git to show the diff you want, but the following command does the trick:

$ vimdiff <(git show "$REV_0":path/to/file) <(git show "$REV_1":another/path/to/file)

Nice to find something to add to an almost 15 years old question!

Glyco