Git prevision

Need to quickly check a previous version of a specific file?...
Do not want to switch the entire repository to an older commit and back?...

A combination of git aliases/awk/shell-functions to the rescue

Here is a quick and intuitive way to checkout a older version of a single file in git.

	Start by adding the following alias to your gitconfig.
	[alias]
	prevision = "!f() { git checkout `git log --oneline $2 | awk -v commit="$1" 'FNR == -commit+1 {print $1}'` $2;} ;f"
	Usage:
	$ git prevision <N> <filename>
	will checkout the <N>th revision (counting backwards from HEAD) into the history of the file <filename>.
	For example to checkout the immediate previous version of a file x/y/z.c use
	$ git prevision -1 x/y/z.c
	Have fun!

view raw git-prevision hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Basically the command does a git log on the specified file and picks the appropriate commit-id in the history of the file and then runs git checkout to the commit-id for the specified file.

Essentially, all that one would manually do in this situation, wrapped-up in one beautiful, efficient git-alias - git-prevision

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