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Restore files and dirs from previous commits in Git

How to bring back files and whole directories from an earlier commit in Git, written after deleting an icons directory in gnome-system-tools.

Mistake done at gnome-system-tools with icons directory deleted

When I met git, I fall in love in the moment. You can read any apointments I wrote previously here, and here (in spanish) but today I’ll explain how to restore files and directories from previous commits that it was deleted by a mistake or intentionally in the past. It’s quite easy to revert or reset a single file from history, but what about pulling an entire directory out of the history? The solution is simple: git checkout ID_of_commit -- /path/to/dir This will restore the directory from the given “commit with ID” in the /path/to/dir. But, let me show you a mistake I made in a commit into the gnome-system-tools repository: I send a translation for a GNOME app in Galician and (I don’t know how) accidentally, I deleted the directory icons. For make this more complicated there were a lot of commits ahead of my commit. In the previous image the highlighted commit is where I deleted the directory. If you issue at you terminal within the app directory:

    ➜  gnome-system-tools git:(master) git reflog
    cc9cead HEAD@{0}: commit: Restore deleted icons directory, deleted by a mistake.
    77f6382 HEAD@{1}: pull : Fast-forward
    a01e094 HEAD@{2}: a01e094fa09fceaaf86a78d668a5e431338050bf: updating HEAD
    b833072 HEAD@{3}: b8330723f6efb8ecf1e07cb01b17d524a6748a38: updating HEAD
    e6808e5 HEAD@{4}: pull : Fast-forward
    b833072 HEAD@{5}: b8330723f6efb8ecf1e07cb01b17d524a6748a38: updating HEAD
    e6808e5 HEAD@{6}: pull : Fast-forward
    fa069b2 HEAD@{7}: commit: Added gl to DOC_LINGUAS into Makefile.am for services and time documentation
    5cc13f5 HEAD@{8}: commit: Updated galician translations, and added galician translations for time and services documentation
    2915e6e HEAD@{9}: pull : Fast-forward
    b833072 HEAD@{10}: commit: Updated Galician translations  <------ this is the commit
    a01e094 HEAD@{11}: pull : Fast-forward

you’ll see the ID that points to that commit. So applying the ^ modifier to the damned ID I can obtain the previous commit ID, this one has the icons directory and now is when the magic comes in:

➜  gnome-system-tools git:(master) git checkout b833072^ -- icons/
➜  gnome-system-tools git:(master) ✗ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD ..." to unstage)
#
#   new file:   icons/16x16/Makefile.am
#   new file:   icons/16x16/apps/Makefile.am
#   new file:   icons/16x16/apps/time-admin.png
#   new file:   icons/16x16/apps/time-admin.svg
#   new file:   icons/22x22/Makefile.am
#   new file:   icons/22x22/apps/Makefile.am
#   new file:   icons/22x22/

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