Re: Retrieving a file in git that was deleted and committed

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 8, 2018, 07:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20181208072915.GA20697@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CADHAf1bH5Aaw3-5WvoHawjXUXL9B-YNvh+AYU1fpGbUe=c0E+A@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Dec 07, 2018 at 01:50:57PM -0800, biswaranjan panda wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Thanks Jeff and Bryan! However, I am curious that if there were a way
> to tell git blame to skip a commit (the one which added the file again
> and maybe the one which deleted it originally) while it walks back
> through history, then it should just get back the
> entire history right ?

Not easily. ;)

You can feed a set of revisions to git-blame with the "-S" option, but I don't offhand know how it handles diffs (I think it would have to still diff each commit against its parent, since history is non-linear, and a list is inherently linear). You might want to experiment with that.

Other than that, you can play with git-replace to produce a fake history, as if the deletion never happened. But note that will affect all commands, not just one particular blame. It might be a neat way to play with blame, but I doubt I'd leave the replacement in place in the long term.

-Peff