From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2021 16:47:24 GMT
Subject: Re: Extracting a file
Message-ID: <xmqqa6mdou3n.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CAB9Jk9Af-GKFUQCiyN9fKmjA1hOLBw9mc_FPFBHX1m1NAnbfmQ@mail.gmail.com>

Angelo Borsotti <angelo.borsotti@gmail.com> writes:

>> You might also like "git checkout -p HASH -- A", which will let you pick
>> individual hunks from HASH:A and apply them to your working tree.
>
> This shows the differences between the committed and the current file,
> in a patch
> form, which is handy to apply to the current file to make it equal to
> the old, but
> not if I want to browse the old file and understand how it was before.

Why doesn't a straight-forward "check out the path from an old
version" work?  That is

    git checkout $old_version -- path/to/file.ext

Is it because you have changes to path/to/file.ext already (in which
case "mv path/to/file.ext path/to/file.ext-saved" would be a quick
way to save it away)?

And then path/to/file.ext can be inspected to your heart's content,
and when you are done and want to go back to the current state, you
can do "git checkout HEAD -- path/to/file.ext" (followed by the
earlier "mv" in reverse)?