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

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

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