How to sparsely checkout only one single file from a git repository?

Question

How do I checkout just one file from a git repo?

Answer 1

git clone --filter from Git 2.19 actually skips downloading extra files

This option will actually skip fetching most unneeded objects from the server. E.g. to obtain just the file small/0000 from this test repository: https://github.com/cirosantilli/test-git-partial-clone-big-small-no-bigtree we can do:

git clone --depth 1 --no-checkout --filter=blob:none \
  https://github.com/cirosantilli/test-git-partial-clone-big-small-no-bigtree
cd test-git-partial-clone-big-small-no-bigtree
git checkout master -- small/0000

It also works with multiple files:

git checkout master -- small/0000 small/0001

but note that files are downloaded one by one, so it will be very slow if you do that for a huge number of files. Entire directories can however be efficiently downloaded as per: How do I clone a subdirectory only of a Git repository?

That test repository has several large files in addition to the small ones, and download of the small file is basically instantaneous, so we can be sure that we are not downloading those large files at all just due to both the short request timing and small directory size on ncdu.

The format of --filter is documented on man git-rev-list. An extension was made to the Git remote protocol to support this feature.

Tested on Git 2.37.2, Ubuntu 22.10.

Answer 2

Originally, I mentioned in 2012 git archive (see Jared Forsyth's answer and Robert Knight's answer), since git1.7.9.5 (March 2012), Paul Brannan's answer:

git archive --format=tar --remote=origin HEAD:path/to/directory -- filename | tar -O -xf -

But: in 2013, that was no longer possible for remote https://github.com URLs.
See the old page "Can I archive a repository?"

The current (2018) page "About archiving content and data on GitHub" recommends using third-party services like GHTorrent or GH Archive.

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So you can also deal with local copies/clone:

You could alternatively do the following if you have a local copy of the bare repository as mentioned in this answer,

git --no-pager --git-dir /path/to/bar/repo.git show branch:path/to/file >file

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Or you must clone first the repo, meaning you get the full history:

• in the .git repo

• in the working tree.

• But then you can do a sparse checkout (if you are using Git1.7+),:

  • enable the sparse checkout option (git config core.sparsecheckout true)
  • adding what you want to see in the .git/info/sparse-checkout file
  • re-reading the working tree to only display what you need

To re-read the working tree:

$ git read-tree -m -u HEAD

That way, you end up with a working tree including precisely what you want (even if it is only one file)

---

Richard Gomes points (in the comments) to "How do I clone, fetch or sparse checkout a single directory or a list of directories from git repository?"

A bash function which avoids downloading the history, which retrieves a single branch and which retrieves a list of files or directories you need.

---

With Git 2.40 (Q1 2023), the logic to see if we are using the "cone" mode by checking the sparsity patterns has been tightened to avoid mistaking a pattern that names a single file as specifying a cone.

See commit 5842710 (03 Jan 2023) by William Sprent (williams-unity).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit ab85a7d, 16 Jan 2023)}

dir: check for single file cone patterns

^{Signed-off-by: William Sprent
Acked-by: Victoria Dye}

The sparse checkout documentation states that the cone mode pattern set is limited to patterns that either recursively include directories or patterns that match all files in a directory.
In the sparse checkout file, the former manifest in the form:

/A/B/C/

while the latter become a pair of patterns either in the form:

/A/B/
!/A/B/*/

or in the special case of matching the toplevel files:

/*
!/*/

The 'add_pattern_to_hashsets()' function contains checks which serve to disable cone-mode when non-cone patterns are encountered.
However, these do not catch when the pattern list attempts to match a single file or directory, e.g. a pattern in the form:

/A/B/C

This causes sparse-checkout to exhibit unexpected behaviour when such a pattern is in the sparse-checkout file and cone mode is enabled.

Concretely, with the pattern like the above, sparse-checkout, in non-cone mode, will only include the directory or file located at '/A/B/C'.
However, with cone mode enabled, sparse-checkout will instead just manifest the toplevel files but not any file located at '/A/B/C'.

Relatedly, issues occur when supplying the same kind of filter when partial cloning with '--filter=sparse:oid=<oid>'.
'upload-pack' will correctly just include the objects that match the non-cone pattern matching.
Which means that checking out the newly cloned repo with the same filter, but with cone mode enabled, fails due to missing objects.

To fix these issues, add a cone mode pattern check that asserts that every pattern is either a directory match or the pattern '/*'.
Add a test to verify the new pattern check and modify another to reflect that non-directory patterns are caught earlier.

Answer 3

git checkout <other-branch> -- <single-file> works for me on git.2.37.1.
However, the file is (git-magically) staged for commit and I can not see git diff properly.
I then run git restore --staged db/structure.sql to unstage it.

That way I DO have the file in the exact version that I want and I can see the difference with other versions of that file.

Answer 4

Yes you can this by this command which download one specific file

wget -o <DesiredFileName>  <Git FilePath>\?token\=<personalGitToken>

example

wget -o javascript-test-automation.md https://github.com/akashgupta03/awesome-test-automation/blob/master/javascript-test-automation.md\?token\=<githubPersonalTone>

Answer 5

Another solution, similar to the one using --filter=blob:none is to use --filter=tree:0 (you can read an explanation about the differences here).

This method is usually faster than the blob-one because it doesn't download the tree structure, but has a drawback. Given you are delaying the retrieval of the tree, you will have a penalty when you enter into the repo directory (depending on the size and structure of your repo it may be many times larger compared with a simple shallow-clone).

If that's the case for you, you can fix it by not entering into the repo:

git clone -n --filter=tree:0 <repo_url> tgt_dir
git -C tgt_dir checkout <branch> -- <filename>
cat tgt_dir/<filename> # or move it to another place and delete tgt_dir ;)

Take into consideration that if you have to checkout multiple files, the tree population will also impact your performance, so I recommend this for a single file and only if the repo is large enough to be worth it all these actions.

Answer 6

this works for me. use git with some shell command

git clone --no-checkout --depth 1 git.example.com/project.git && cd project && git show HEAD:path/to/file_you_need > ../file_you_need && cd .. && rm -rf project

Answer 7

if you have a file, locally changed (the one which messing with git pull) just do:

git checkout origin/master filename

1. git checkout - switch branches or restore working tree files, (here we switching nothing, just overwriting file
2. origin/master - your current branch or you can use specific revision-number for example: cd0fa799c582e94e59e5b21e872f5ffe2ad0154b,
3. filename with path from project main directory (where directory .git lives) so if you have structure:

`.git

public/index.html

public/css/style.css

vendors

composer.lock`

and want reload index.html - just use public/index.html

Answer 8

In codecommit (git version of Amazon AWS) you can do this:

aws codecommit \
  get-file --repository-name myrepo \
  --commit-specifier master \
  --file-path path/myfile \
  --output text \
  --query fileContent | 
base64 --decode > myfile

Answer 9

Here is the complete solution for pulling and pushing only a particular file inside git repository:

1. First you need to clone git repository with a special hint –no checkout

git clone --no-checkout <git url>

2. The next step is to get rid of unstaged files in the index with the command:

git reset

3. Now you are allowed to start pulling files you want to change with the command:

git checkout origin/master <path to file>

4. Now the repository folder contains files that you may start editing right away. After editing you need to execute plain and familar sequence of commands.

git add <path to file>
git commit -m <message text>
git push

Answer 10

Normally it's not possible to download just one file from git without downloading the whole repository as suggested in the first answer. It's because Git doesn't store files as you think (as CVS/SVN do), but it generates them based on the entire history of the project.

But there are some workarounds for specific cases. Examples below with placeholders for user, project, branch, filename.

GitHub

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/user/project/branch/filename

GitLab

wget https://gitlab.com/user/project/raw/branch/filename

GitWeb

If you're using Git on the Server - GitWeb, then you may try in example (change it into the right path):

wget "http://example.com/gitweb/?p=example;a=blob_plain;f=README.txt;hb=HEAD"

GitWeb at drupalcode.org

Example:

wget "http://drupalcode.org/project/ads.git/blob_plain/refs/heads/master:/README.md"

googlesource.com

There is an undocumented feature that allows you to download base64-encoded versions of raw files:

curl "https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/+/master/http/transport_security_state_static.json?format=TEXT" | base64 --decode

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In other cases check if your Git repository is using any web interfaces.

If it's not using any web interface, you may consider to push your code to external services such as GitHub, Bitbucket, etc. and use it as a mirror.

If you don't have wget installed, try curl -O (url) alternatively.

Answer 11

I am adding this answer as an alternative to doing a formal checkout or some similar local operation. Assuming that you have access to the web interface of your Git provider, you might be able to directly view any file at a given desired commit. For example, on GitHub you may use something like:

https://github.com/hubotio/hubot/blob/ed25584f/src/adapter.coffee

Here ed25584f is the first 8 characters from the SHA-1 hash of the commit of interest, followed by the path to the source file.

Similary, on Bitbucket we can try:

https://bitbucket.org/cofarrell/stash-browse-code-plugin/src/06befe08

In this case, we place the commit hash at the end of the source URL.

Answer 12

Now we can! As this is the first result on google, I thought I'd update this to the latest standing. With the advent of git 1.7.9.5, we have the git archive command which will allow you to retrieve a single file from a remote host.

git archive --remote=git://git.foo.com/project.git HEAD:path/in/repo filename | tar -x

See answer in full here https://stackoverflow.com/a/5324532/290784

Answer 13

I don’t see what worked for me listed out here so I will include it should anybody be in my situation.

My situation, I have a remote repository of maybe 10,000 files and I need to build an RPM file for my Linux system. The build of the RPM includes a git clone of everything. All I need is one file to start the RPM build. I can clone the entire source tree which does what I need but it takes an extra two minutes to download all those files when all I need is one. I tried to use the git archive option discussed and I got “fatal: Operation not supported by protocol.” It seems I have to get some sort of archive option enabled on the server and my server is maintained by bureaucratic thugs that seem to enjoy making it difficult to get things done.

What I finally did was I went into the web interface for bitbucket and viewed the one file I needed. I did a right click on the link to download a raw copy of the file and selected “copy shortcut” from the resulting popup. I could not just download the raw file because I needed to automate things and I don’t have a browser interface on my Linux server.

For the sake of discussion, that resulted in the URL:

https://ourArchive.ourCompany.com/projects/ThisProject/repos/data/raw/foo/bar.spec?at=refs%2Fheads%2FTheBranchOfInterest

I could not directly download this file from the bitbucket repository because I needed to sign in first. After a little digging, I found this worked: On Linux:

echo "myUser:myPass123"| base64
bXlVc2VyOm15UGFzczEyMwo=

curl -H 'Authorization: Basic bXlVc2VyOm15UGFzczEyMwo=' 'https://ourArchive.ourCompany.com/projects/ThisProject/repos/data/raw/foo/bar.spec?at=refs%2Fheads%2FTheBranchOfInterest' > bar.spec

This combination allowed me to download the one file I needed to build everything else.

Answer 14

Say the file name is 123.txt, this works for me:

git checkout --theirs  123.txt

If the file is inside a directory A, make sure to specify it correctly:

git checkout --theirs  "A/123.txt"

Answer 15

If you need a specific file from a specific branch from a remote Git repository the command is:

git archive --remote=git://git.example.com/project.git refs/heads/mybranch path/to/myfile |tar xf -

The rest can be derived from @VonC's answer:

If you need a specific file from the master branch it is:

git archive --remote=git://git.example.com/project.git HEAD path/to/myfile |tar xf -

If you need a specific file from a tag it is:

git archive --remote=git://git.example.com/project.git mytag path/to/myfile |tar xf -

Answer 16

Minimal Guide

git checkout -- <filename>

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Ref: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout

Dup: Undo working copy modifications of one file in Git?

Answer 17

If you have edited a local version of a file and wish to revert to the original version maintained on the central server, this can be easily achieved using Git Extensions.

• Initially the file will be marked for commit, since it has been modified
• Select (double click) the file in the file tree menu
• The revision tree for the single file is listed.
• Select the top/HEAD of the tree and right click save as
• Save the file to overwrite the modified local version of the file
• The file now has the correct version and will no longer be marked for commit!

Easy!

Answer 18

Very simple:

git checkout from-branch-name -- path/to/the/file/you/want

This will not checkout the from-branch-name branch. You will stay on whatever branch you are on, and only that single file will be checked out from the specified branch.

Here's the relevant part of the manpage for git-checkout

git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
       When <paths> or --patch are given, git checkout does not switch
       branches. It updates the named paths in the working tree from the
       index file or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit). In
       this case, the -b and --track options are meaningless and giving
       either of them results in an error. The <tree-ish> argument can be
       used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e. commit, tag or tree) to
       update the index for the given paths before updating the working
       tree.

Hat tip to Ariejan de Vroom who taught me this from this blog post.

Answer 19

You can do it by

git archive --format=tar --remote=origin HEAD | tar xf -
git archive --format=tar --remote=origin HEAD <file> | tar xf -

Answer 20

If you only need to download the file, no need to check out with Git.

GitHub Mate is much easier to do so, it's a Chrome extension, enables you click the file icon to download it. also open source

Answer 21

Two variants on what's already been given:

git archive --format=tar --remote=git://git.foo.com/project.git HEAD:path/to/directory filename | tar -O -xf -

and:

git archive --format=zip --remote=git://git.foo.com/project.git HEAD:path/to/directory filename | funzip

These write the file to standard output.

Answer 22

If you already have a copy of the git repo, you can always checkout a version of a file using a git log to find out the hash-id (for example 3cdc61015724f9965575ba954c8cd4232c8b42e4) and then you simply type:

git checkout hash-id path-to-file

Here is an actual example:

git checkout 3cdc61015724f9965575ba954c8cd4232c8b42e4 /var/www/css/page.css

Answer 23

git checkout branch_or_version -- path/file

example: git checkout HEAD -- main.c

Answer 24

Working in GIT 1.7.2.2

For example you have a remote some_remote with branches branch1, branch32

so to checkout a specific file you call this commands:

git checkout remote/branch path/to/file

as an example it will be something like this

git checkout some_remote/branch32 conf/en/myscript.conf
git checkout some_remote/branch1 conf/fr/load.wav

This checkout command will copy the whole file structure conf/en and conf/fr into the current directory where you call these commands (of course I assume you ran git init at some point before)

Answer 25

First clone the repo with the -n option, which suppresses the default checkout of all files, and the --depth 1 option, which means it only gets the most recent revision of each file

git clone -n git://path/to/the_repo.git --depth 1

Then check out just the file you want like so:

cd the_repo
git checkout HEAD name_of_file

Answer 26

In git you do not 'checkout' files before you update them - it seems like this is what you are after.

Many systems like clearcase, csv and so on require you to 'checkout' a file before you can make changes to it. Git does not require this. You clone a repository and then make changes in your local copy of repository.

Once you updated files you can do:

git status

To see what files have been modified. You add the ones you want to commit to index first with (index is like a list to be checked in):

git add .

or

git add blah.c

Then do git status will show you which files were modified and which are in index ready to be commited or checked in.

To commit files to your copy of repository do:

git commit -a -m "commit message here"

See git website for links to manuals and guides.

Answer 27

It sounds like you're trying to carry over an idea from centralized version control, which git by nature is not - it's distributed. If you want to work with a git repository, you clone it. You then have all of the contents of the work tree, and all of the history (well, at least everything leading up to the tip of the current branch), not just a single file or a snapshot from a single commit.

 git clone /path/to/repo
 git clone git://url/of/repo
 git clone http://url/of/repo