Question

I’m trying to get the previous version of a file like this:

git checkout <git-hash>

After this, I see that the file on my hd is the previous version. How can I push
this version to the server??? I tried the following:

git push ab master

but all I get is

Everything up-to-date

What am I doing wrong?

---

When i do


git checkout 123456 -- src/test.c



git commit -m "Bringing back test.c from commit 123456"


I get


Not currentyly on any branch


123456 is hash

Answer 1

I’m assuming that 123456 is the name of an old commit, not the name of a file – it’s not clear from the question, as Ben Hocking points out.

When you push, you push a complete commit (which defines the complete state of a tree) rather than individual files. The git push ab master command is the same as git push ab master:master, which means “update master on the remote ab with my version of master“. The error “Everything up-to-date” is telling you that all of the history of your master branch is already contained in the remote master branch.

Instead, you’ll need to create a new commit with the old version of that file instead. You can do this with:

# Make sure that you're back on the master branch first:
git checkout master 

git checkout 123456 -- src/test.c
git commit -m "Bringing back test.c from commit 123456"
git push ab master