Re: How do get a specific version of a particular file?

quoting Linus:

Well, you can just add

       [alias]
               cat=-p cat-file -p

to your ~/.gitconfig file, and you're there.

[ For all the non-git people here: the first "-p" is shorthand for
 "--paginate", and means that git will automatically start a pager for
 the output. The second "-p" is shorthand for "pretty" (there's no
 long-format command line switch for it, though), and means that git
 cat-file will show the result in a human-readable way, regardless of
 whether it's just a text-file, or a git directory ]

So then you can do just

       git cat todo:TODO

and you're done.

[ So for the non-git people, what that will actually _do_ is to show the
 TODO file in the "todo" branch - regardless of whether it is checked out
 or not, and start a pager for you. ]

I actually do this sometimes, but I've never done it for branches (and I do it seldom enough that I haven't added the alias). I do it for things like

       git cat v2.6.16:Makefile