How to revert a folder to a particular commit by creating a patch

Question

Here's my history for the folder 'somefolder'

$ git log somefolder

commit 89cd
More changes to somefolder

commit ef47a
Updating somefolder and other stuff

commit e095
Bugs fixed in somefolder

I want to revert somefolder back to the 'Bugs fixed in some folder" commit.

Since the second commit involved changes outside of somefolder, I don't want to revert this commit.

I guess the safest way would be to create a diff/patch between commit e095 and 89cd that applies just to some folder, and then apply that patch. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You can use git checkout to update your repository to a specific state.

git checkout e095 -- somefolder

As for your question about generating the diff, that would work too. Just generate the diff to go from your current state back to e095:

git diff 89cd..e095 -- somefolder

Answer 2

You can use git reset to reset the index which will also include removing files that were added in more recent commits (git checkout on it's own doesn't do this):

git reset e095 -- somefolder

However git reset doesn't update the working copy and the --hard option doesn't work with folders. So then use git checkout to make the working copy the same as the index:

git checkout -- somefolder

and then if you also want to remove any files added you also need todo:

git clean -fd somefolder