Git (TortoiseGit) - How to revert a single file to a previous revision and then undo the revert?

Alexander picture Alexander · Nov 3, 2009 · Viewed 29.2k times · Source

When using Git with TortoiseGit: Does somebody know how to revert a single file(or a complete repository) to a previous revision?

For example I have a repository containing multiple files. One file exists in three revisions (1 ; 2 ; 3). Now I want to change from revision 3 back to 2.

TortoiseGit offers a "Revert" function in the "Show log" dialog which allows to jump back to a specific revision, but this will revert your whole repository instead of a single file.

Also once I have reverted something, I don't have a clue how to undo the revert and jump back to the newest revision.

Answer

mlibby picture mlibby · Nov 3, 2009

From the command line: git checkout is probably what you want.

The documentation shows an example of:

$ git checkout master~2 Makefile

to revert Makefile to two revisions back in the master branch

From within TortoiseGit (via Windows Explorer) it looks like you can do this with the following steps:

  • Navigate in Explorer to the folder where the file is.
  • Right-click on the file you want to revert, choose Show log from the TortoiseGit context menu
  • In the top section ("graph") select the revision that has the version of the file you want to revert to
  • In the third section (file list) right-click the file and choose Revert to this revision
  • You should get a message like 1 files revert to e19a77