Cloning a tree in git

Question

I am new to git.

I have accidentally removed part of the history for our project on git. Now, I want to set the head to the latest stable release. The issue is the tree to which i want to set the HEAD to is not accessible from it commands, but i can access it through browser.

Does anybody know how to clone a specific tree using its SHA?

I have tried git reset SHA, but the SHA is not recognized. I have also tried git clone -b SHA repo.git, but it did not work either.

Answer 1

You mix up different concepts.

Whenever you clone, you clone a whole repository. (There is no way to clone a specific "tree".)

A repository mainly consist of many commits. Those are the ones you can checkout. Each commit knows its parent commit - this forms a history tree.

A commit itself contains a directory tree with all the files.

---

Usually there is some kind of server hosting the "central" repository.

You first clone your repository. This will create a complete copy of that central repository on your host. (With all the branches and commits.)

Afterwards you usually only interact with your local repository.

---

From you error message (unfortunately hidden only in some comment) it seems like your projects might use submodules. (A way of including a completely different repository in your project.)

This tends to be a bit tricky. Have a look at http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Submodules.

Answer 2

Has this "latest stable release" already pushed to the server? If yes, you can run a git fetch and git checkout SHA.

If this particular commit is only in your local history, do a git reflog and identify the commit. Then checkout the desired commit.