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

On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 01:33:18PM -0800, Elijah Newren wrote:

Hmm...sure, if the file is deleted on the only relevant branch through
history...but what if there were another branch where it weren't
deleted?  What does git blame do then?

In other words, do NOT restore the file as biswaranjan suggested, but
instead restore it this way[1]:

git checkout -b keep-foo $REVISION_BEFORE_FOO_DELETED
git commit --allow-empty -m "We want to keep foo"
git checkout A
git merge --no-commit keep-foo
git checkout keep-foo -- foo.txt
git commit


Now, when you run
  git blame foo.txt

blame should notice that foo.txt didn't exist in the first parent
history on A, so it won't bother walking it to find that at some point
foo.txt did exist there.  Instead, it'll walk down the second parent
and follow its history, where it should keep walking back and show all
the old changes...right?  Or did I mess up my testcase and
misunderstand something somehow?

Yeah, I think that should work, and is a clever way of representing in
the actual history graph what you're we're trying to express. And it
shouldn't have any real downsides.

-Peff