[SOLVED] Novice, git, recover previous version

bkelly · 11-02-2018, 10:53 AM

Summary: There is a local git repository and I need to restore a file two or three versions back.

Details
My searches had discovered that: “git hist” will return a list of git commits. As you know that provides the author, date, and a very long number representing the file committed. I don’t know which file is represented by each number, or which version. The git commands I have found to actually fetch a previous version show a much shorter number for the actual process of fetching the version wanted. How do I get that number?

I did search and was not able to find a link to a site with what I needed. I am behind government firewalls and some sites were blocked, probably the best ones.

I was able to determine the answer. It is at the bottom of post # 5 of this thread, Edit 02

Still, a question remains. What command will show the file(s) saved with a given commit command?

ondoho · 11-03-2018, 05:01 AM

sorry to be the one to tell you, but putting your title in a search query returns many relevant-looking results, esp. this one.

pan64 · 11-03-2018, 05:03 AM

you need to learn git. There are a lot of commands like:

Code:

git show <commit id>   # this will show you what was committed (changed in a given commit).
git log                # list of commits (like history)
git checkout <commit id> # this will "recover" any commit you have.
.....

The short and long commit ids are the same, just sometimes we use the full string, sometimes only the first 7 characters.

Git does not handle files, but the whole repository "in one". That means every commit id represents a state of the whole repository (workspace), not only a single file.

You could hopefully find a git tutorial or something on the net which is not blocked. There are man pages, youtube videos, pdf documentation and whatever you can imagine.

ondoho · 11-03-2018, 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bkelly

I am behind government firewalls and some sites were blocked, probably the best ones.

oh, i missed that bit.
sorry if my reply was just a little snarkier than necessary.
i really hope you can use stackoverflow, the second link in my post.

bkelly · 11-13-2018, 11:23 AM

ondoho,
Been on travel for a week and just returned. No problem with any snarkiness. For example, your git 1 link returns an error stating "Can't connect securely to this page" and the firewalls do not allow an insecure connection. It is even more difficult because my Linux box is completely isolated and I cannot copy paste to ask questions.

I am working on tutorials. When I get a log file listing, rather than a file name I can only get the SHA1 number. But that number means nothing to me. I am looking for a way to convert that number to a file name. Seems like someone would have written a script to read those log outputs and somehow fetch the actual names and present that to the user. That is my current plan of attack. I remain a Linux novice.

Edit:
from here: http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/Git...ommitreference
Section 28.1 is titled Retrieving file from the history. It has this example command:

Quote:

git show [reference]:[file_path]

I am unable to determine exactly what to insert in place of [reference]. The SHA number does not work and the file path/name is already there.

In my directory, with a local git repository, there is a file named: Walkthrough template.odt. The goal is to retrieve not the last committed version but the one before that. What steps will accomplish this goal?

Edit 02

After looking at an example that compressed multiple commands and responses one line with no explanation I have discovered this method. Begin with:

Code:

git log -–oneline

This provides a list of commits shown with one line per commit and shown as repeats of

Quote:

Reference_number commit_comments

There is one line for each commit and each has a unique reference number.
If the person doing the commit made good comments then you can select the commit to use. Then enter:

Code:

git   reference_number    file_name

Where reference number is the number at the beginning of one of the commit lines and the file name is simply the name of the file to be restored.
Several sites have that format, but don’t describe what that reference number is.
So, is this a valid method? It worked for my test directory but will it always work?

Still, a question remains. What command will show the file(s) saved with a given commit command?