Recover staged but not committed files after 'git rm -rf'

Question

On my local machine I removed files from folder.

git init
git add --all

then I wrote (don't ask me, why! :) )

git rm -rf

I don't commit, yet. Now I have empty folders in my project. In .git folder has objects with 53 Mb of files.

How can I recover my files? I've tried programs like Drill Disc and Stellar, but not found my files. And I can't rollback from GIT.

How can I recover the lost files?

Grani

If you do not get them back by using any "undelete" tool, they are gone. – Longsome

https://mcmap.net/q/22361/-recover-from-losing-uncommitted-changes-by-quot-git-reset-hard-quot/… this may be useful – Graeco

Answer 1

(update) Use git fsck instead, it is a builtin command for retrieving files you have once added to git repository.

git fsck --lost-found --unreachable

after the command processing, retrieved files will be placed at .git/lost-found/other, with file name of a sha256 hash. Although the original name is still lost, the content will be back.

---

You can find your files in your .git/objects directory.

Suppose there is a .git/objects/2f/ae996f8f8f9298b41ba4fdbac3d62014f9579e object, you can execute

git cat-file -p 2fae996

to get the content of your lost file.

But I'm sorry, I have no idea about reconstructing your directory or doing this automatically.

Fist

+1: Wow, indeed. Strange that the files are there but are not accessible in any way using the normal git commands. – Hu

Im not worry about directories, but I need files. "git cat-file" - this like "cat" command in *nix? How can I save file in other directory? – Grani

you can save it by redirection just like an usual unix command. git cat-file object > /path/to/where/you/want/save/it, but I think it is not a really good idea because there is no information about file names. – Fist

It possible to do it automaticly! Here is my shit-code on PHP )) codepad.org/khIjLFnI – Grani

@DanielHilgarth git show 2fae996 can do it too (how shame I don't know it until today), show is a versatile upper interface for many lower command. – Fist

Thank you so much, I thought I'd lost all my files :) – Modred

Answer 2

have you tried :

git reset --hard

?

Hope that works :)

Percolator

After a git rm -rf, you can even safely do a hard reset. – Sanity

-1: That would only work if rm -rf would have been used. See my answer for an explanation. – Hu

This command changed the code to the last commit and remove all the modified files. – Jehoshaphat

You really should delete this answer. It doesn't help at all. – Hu

I did almost the exact same thing as the person who asked the question. The only difference is that I was a lot further along on a project. This answer resolved the issue for me. I lost all of the work I'd done since my last commit, and I learned my lesson about trying to use shortcuts when I need to stage deleted files, but at least I didn't lose the whole project. Thanks! – Roughdry