How to revert committed changes to files of a certain type in git

Question

I would like to revert an older git known commit (not the last one, already pushed to upstream), but would like to affect only certain file types, e.g. *.java. Other changes, such as changes to files of type *.xml I would like to keep.

Any downstream changes to *.java files should be undone as well.

Are you looking to revert the changes in `*.java` from only the last commit? — Rahul Bhobe, Sep 03 '20 at 08:25
If there are subsequent commits in that file, do you want preserve those? — Rahul Bhobe, Sep 03 '20 at 08:28
See updated [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/63719841/11057988) — Rahul Bhobe, Sep 03 '20 at 09:02

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 03 '20 at 08:31

2

# first revert your commit but without committing
git revert -n <commitToRevert>

# then restore your .xml files
git checkout <commitToRevert> -- *.xml

# and finally commit
git commit

(revert without committing)

answered Sep 03 '20 at 08:31

Romain Valeri

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Rahul Bhobe · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-03T15:37:41.433

If you know the commitid you want to revert from, you could checkout the known files from the parent commit (commitid^). In your case the files are *.java:

# checkout *.java files recursively from a parent commit of a known "commitid"
git checkout commitid^ -- `git ls-tree commitid -r --name-only | grep ".java"`

# Commit
git commit

A parent commit is denoted by a caret (^) symbol after the commit hash.

Also see similar answer. Also see checkout by wildcard.

How to revert committed changes to files of a certain type in git

2 Answers2