How do I check out a certain revision with Git?

Question

From time to time I want to do this simple thing using Git:

I have a git repository with several commits.

Now how do I checkout all directories and files of a particular commit ?

Should I clone the repo locally and then do a git checkout for that particular commit ?

Is there a simpler command which just checks out all the files and directories of a particular commit to a local directory ? I'm just going to use those files and I'm not going to change them etc, So I do not need to create a local repo just for checking out a few files and viewing them. Correct ?

Answer 1

I think you are looking for git archive. Maybe something like this:

 $ git archive --format=tar --prefix=my-tag-or-commit-id/ my-tag-or-commit-id | (cd /path/to/repo/checkout && tar xf -)

Check git help archive for other options and examples. You can use remote branch names for as well.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

If you want to set your repo to the state (i.e. commit) of fa4ef34, use git checkout:

git checkout fa4ef34

This will bring your working copy to the state of fa4ef34.

If you want to check out master again, do a

git checkout master

---

However, if you're interested in a certain commit of a remote repo, you have to do it a bit different.

First, initialize a local repo:

git init myrepo
cd myrepo

Now, you are in your freshly created local repo. To get hands on the commits of a remote repo (for example the Bluetooth packet analyzer), you have to do the following:

git remote add bluez_hcidump git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/bluetooth/bluez-hcidump.git
git fetch bluez_hcidump

Now, your repo knows everything about the bluez_hcidump repo. If you want to access commit fa4ef34 that belongs to that repo, do the steps described at the beginning of my answer.

Answer 3

When you have a repository, you have all the revisions of all the files available to you. First you find the commit you're interested in using git log. Then once you find out some way of referring to the commmit you're interested in, you can cut a branch starting from that commit using git branch branch_name <the commit you're interested in>. Now you'll have a local branch (called branch_name at that commit and you can git checkout branch_name to see what things looked like at that time.