How can I view an old version of a file with Git?

git git-history-graph
mike picture mike · Dec 3, 2008 · Viewed 441k times · Source

Is there a command in Git to see (either dumped to stdout, or in $PAGER or $EDITOR) a particular version of a particular file?

Answer

mipadi picture mipadi · Dec 3, 2008

You can use git show with a path from the root of the repository (./ or ../ for relative pathing):

$ git show REVISION:path/to/file

Replace REVISION with your actual revision (could be a Git commit SHA, a tag name, a branch name, a relative commit name, or any other way of identifying a commit in Git)

For example, to view the version of file <repository-root>/src/main.c from 4 commits ago, use:

$ git show HEAD~4:src/main.c

Git for Windows requires forward slashes even in paths relative to the current directory. For more information, check out the man page for git-show.

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