Git revert certain files

Question

I want to do a revert of a commit, but only for some files. (Not a checkout; a revert. If you are unfamiliar with the difference, keep reading.)

I tried this

git revert --no-commit abcdef123456 -- my/path/to/revert

And I got this error

fatal: ambiguous argument 'my/path/to/revert': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

But that is precisely what I did! (And yes, my/path/to/revert is in my working tree.)

My working theory is that it is not possible to revert only some files, and that the Git error message is misleading.

(Git 1.7.9.5)

---

This is not a duplicate of Reverting a single file to a previous version in git.

• That question (despite the title) pertains to git-checkout. A checkout restores a file to a previous version, removing all commits after that point.
• My question pertains to git-revert. A revert undoes changes made in a particular commit, without touching other commits that may have come later. It applies the reverse of (only) that commit.

Answer 1

A shorter sequence for when you can make a short list of what you want:

git revert that_commit           # do the whole revert
git reset --hard HEAD^           # in what turns out to have been a throwaway commit
git checkout HEAD@{1} -- one/folder   # and just take what you want of the results

Answer 2

I don't think git lets you specify particular files to revert. The best I can think of is this:

git revert --no-commit <commit hash> # Revert, don't commit it yet
git reset # Unstage everything
git add yourFilesToRevert # Add the file to revert
git commit -m "commit message"
git reset --hard # Undo changes from the part of the revert that we didn't commit

Answer 3

vcsjones' answer is probably the best way since revert uses the three-way merge machinery. However, for many cases, you could git apply -R (reverse) the patch to the file (or files) in question, e.g.:

git show <rev> -- path/to/file | git apply -R

(or git diff—any diff generator that allow you to limit the result to specific files, really—but git show is the obvious go-to for non-merge commits; for merges you'd need to specify the correct parent).

Answer 4

Git works by commits. You cannot git revert a file. Even if there's just one file in a commit, you are still reverting the commit. The solution is to emulate git revert to get back what you need for a new commit. I don't see the cleanest and safest way shown here - revert on another branch and checkout what you need. Unlike git apply, it won't break if there are merge conflicts and revert/reset really only lends itself to undoing one commit.

git checkout -b tmpbranch
git revert commitref                   # complete commit, follow with more reverts as needed
git checkout mainbranch
git checkout tmpbranch -- file/i/need  # while on mainbranch and to index by default
git commit -m "this is a new commit message"
git branch -d tmpbranch