List all the files that ever existed in a Git repository

Question

This is a simplified variation of Strager's solution:

git log --pretty=format: --name-status | cut -f2- | sort -u

Edit: Thanks to Jakub for teaching me a bit more in the comments, this version has a shorter pipeline and gives git more opportunity to get things right.

git log --pretty=format: --name-only --diff-filter=A | sort -u

This does the right thing for checking if a filename was ever present in the repo not just on the current branch.

git log --all --pretty=format: --name-only --diff-filter=A | sort - | grep fubar

You can run git-log --name-status, which echoes something like:

commit afdbbaf52ab24ef7ce1daaf75f3aaf18c4d2fee0
Author: Your Name <[email protected]>
Date:   Tue Aug 12 13:28:34 2008 -0700

    Added test file.

A       test

Then extract files added:

git-log --name-status | sed -ne 's/^A[^u]//p' | sort -u

Here is two useful alias: FindFile ff and FindFilewithCopies ffc:

# Find if one file ever had into repository
ff = "!git log --pretty=format: --name-status --all -M -B | sort -u | grep $1   #"
# The same as above but showing copied files
ffc = "!git log --pretty=format: --name-status --all -C -M -B | sort -u | grep $1 #"

You get information about file names and operations with them.

Sample use:

$ git ff create
A       database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php
A       database/migrations/2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table.php
A       database/migrations/2015_05_11_200932_create_boletin_table.php
A       database/migrations/2015_05_15_133500_create_usuarios_table.php
D       database/migrations/2015_05_12_000000_create_users_table.php
M       database/migrations/2015_05_11_200932_create_boletin_table.php
R051    database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php    database/migrations/2015_05_12_000000_create_users_table.php

$ git ffc create
A       database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php
A       database/migrations/2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table.php
A       database/migrations/2015_05_11_200932_create_boletin_table.php
A       database/migrations/2015_05_15_133500_create_usuarios_table.php
C052    database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php    database/migrations/2015_05_11_210246_create_boletin_nosend_table.php
D       database/migrations/2015_05_12_000000_create_users_table.php
M       database/migrations/2015_05_11_200932_create_boletin_table.php
R051    database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php    database/migrations/2015_05_12_000000_create_users_table.php