How to get certain commit from GitHub project

Question

I need to download the Facebook API from GitHub. Normally, I just click on the 'Downloads" tab to download the latest source code. In this case, I need an older commit: 91f256424531030a454548693c3a6ca49ca3f35a, but I have no idea how to get the entire project from that commit...

Can someone please tell me how to do this?

(BTW, im on a mac. Don't know if that makes any difference).

please also see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13636559/how-to-download-zip-from-github-for-a-particular-commit-sha if you "only" need the "zipped-snapshot-code". — Jean Fontaine, Sep 05 '15 at 06:24

Mark Longair · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-20T08:19:31.327

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First, clone the repository using git, e.g. with:

git clone git://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk.git

That downloads the complete history of the repository, so you can switch to any version. Next, change into the newly cloned repository:

cd facebook-ios-sdk

... and use git checkout <COMMIT> to change to the right commit:

git checkout 91f25642453

That will give you a warning, since you're no longer on a branch, and have switched directly to a particular version. (This is known as "detached HEAD" state.) Since it sounds as if you only want to use this SDK, rather than actively develop it, this isn't something you need to worry about, unless you're interested in finding out more about how git works.

edited Oct 20 '11 at 08:19

answered Oct 20 '11 at 08:04

Mark Longair

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At this point you can also `git export` if you just want the files. – Xeoncross Sep 26 '12 at 16:29
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`git checkout -q ` silences warning stderr during git checkout. – Manavalan Gajapathy Apr 19 '19 at 22:11
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When I do git checkout 441b034635240bc873700473af3e98533e94a0b5, this gives an error: fatal: reference is not a tree: 441b034635240bc873700473af3e98533e94a0b5 – ttb Mar 13 '20 at 17:35
@Xeoncross "git: 'export' is not a git command." – Cardinal System Jan 09 '21 at 20:06
Just as a note `git clone git://blar` does not download the complete history. It downloads the history of active branches. It's a very subtle difference in git. – WORMSS Feb 04 '21 at 10:23

Sivanand Kheti · Answer 2 · 2016-05-31T14:36:45.077

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I don't know if it was there when you had posted this question, but the best and easiest way to download a commit is to click on the commits tab when viewing a repository. Then instead of clicking on the commit name, click on Browse the repository at this point in the history button with <> symbol to the right side of the commit name/message, and finally on the Download ZIP button that comes when you click Clone or Download button.

I hope it helps you guys.

edited May 31 '16 at 14:36

answered Nov 23 '12 at 12:40

Sivanand Kheti

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This is the only way to recover "lost commits" which are commits that github does have a history of, but were erased from the "official" git timeline. Using this, you can get a zip snapshot of a commit that was rebased into oblivion, push that commit to a new branch, fetch that branch into an existing repo, and cherry-pick it back into existence. – Ajax Dec 15 '14 at 16:18
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@Ajax That's not true. You can still get the sha using `git reflog`, and then checkout the detached commit – Aaron Brager Mar 16 '16 at 18:54
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@AaronBrager sure, reflog will work, IF you are on the same machine that had initially had the commit. The OP already knows the commit, so they would not need reflog and could just checkout directly. However, I am talking about cases where you don't have the commit locally, and it isn't on any branches that are still in the public repo. In these cases, github may still have a record of the commit, which you can download as a zip to be able to recover said commit. – Ajax Mar 24 '16 at 20:33
@Ajax Ah, thanks for the clarification. As an alternative, you can hit the GitHub API (https://api.github.com/repos/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/events) and create a branch from the orphaned commit ([instructions here](https://objectpartners.com/2014/02/11/recovering-a-commit-from-githubs-reflog/)) – Aaron Brager Mar 24 '16 at 20:42
Very nice. +1 I didn't know you could query github's reflog like that! – Ajax Mar 24 '16 at 22:49
It was the best solution – iamtheasad May 11 '21 at 06:04

Suraj K Thomas · Answer 3 · 2015-12-07T04:06:51.063

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Sivan's answer in gif

1.Click on commits in github

2.Select Browse code on the right side of each commit

3.Click on download zip , which will download source code at that point of time of commit

edited Dec 07 '15 at 04:06

answered Oct 26 '15 at 12:15

Suraj K Thomas

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Hello suraj can you please tell me how did you created the gif of your screen? – Rahul Satal Dec 06 '15 at 18:49
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use quick time player to record a video of screen.Do conversion of video to gif using any available tool .Google it.@ Rahul Satal – Suraj K Thomas Dec 07 '15 at 04:03
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Thanks @SurajKThomas for the gif – Sivanand Kheti Jul 14 '16 at 06:54

user1767754 · Answer 4 · 2018-01-26T17:20:39.587

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To just download a commit using the 7-digit SHA1 short form do:

Working Example:

https://github.com/python/cpython/archive/31af650.zip

Description:

 `https://github.com/username/projectname/archive/commitshakey.zip`

If you have the long hash key 31af650ee25f65794b75d4dfefed6fe4758781c1, just get the first 7 chars 31af650. It's the default for GitHub.

edited Jan 26 '18 at 17:20

answered Nov 07 '17 at 06:31

user1767754

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score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 30 '16 at 20:16

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The easiest way that I found to recover a lost commit (that only exists on github and not locally) is to create a new branch that includes this commit.

Have the commit open (url like: github.com/org/repo/commit/long-commit-sha)
Click "Browse Files" on the top right
Click the dropdown "Tree: short-sha..." on the top left
Type in a new branch name
git pull the new branch down to local

answered Jun 30 '16 at 20:16

Jeff

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This answer is more general than the accepted one. I met this situation that the commit I wanted already disappeared on master branch, and Github will not keep every commits on non existing branches. So this approach will create a new branch from that commit on Github and make it pull-able. – Qi Luo Dec 27 '16 at 22:58
This let me to recover a commit (with original SHA intact) from a deleted a fork that I did a PR from. After creating a new fork, I opened the PR commit on the upstream repo then did "browse files." I then copied that URL and replaced the username with my own. Then clicked the Tree: dropdown and created a new branch in my fork. Worked great! – Allen Luce Mar 09 '17 at 18:59

score 10 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 19 '20 at 13:58

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Try the following command sequence:

$ git fetch origin <copy/past commit sha1 here>
$ git checkout FETCH_HEAD
$ git push origin master

edited Jun 19 '20 at 13:58

KristofMols

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answered Jun 19 '20 at 10:24

iamtheasad

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This is by far the best answer I have seen if the commit still exists on github but the PR has been squash-merged and the original branch has been deleted. – WORMSS Feb 04 '21 at 10:29
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Note that you seem to need the full commit sha1, *not* the abbreviated sha1. – Eric Cousineau Jun 07 '22 at 23:30

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered May 04 '20 at 08:06

Instead of navigating through the commits, you can also hit the y key (Github Help, Keyboard Shortcuts) to get the "permalink" for the current revision / commit.
This will change the URL from https://github.com/<user>/<repository> (master / HEAD) to https://github.com/<user>/<repository>/tree/<commit id>.

In order to download the specific commit, you'll need to reload the page from that URL, so the Clone or Download button will point to the "snapshot" https://github.com/<user>/<repository>/archive/<commit id>.zip instead of the latest https://github.com/<user>/<repository>/archive/master.zip.

For Tags use `https://github.com///archive/refs/tags.zip` – SePeF Oct 27 '22 at 11:59 — SePeF, Oct 27 '22 at 11:59

Shubham Verma · Answer 8 · 2019-02-09T19:16:18.963

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If you want to go with any certain commit or want to code of any certain commit then you can use below command:

git checkout <BRANCH_NAME>
git reset --hard  <commit ID which code you want>
git push --force

Example:

 git reset --hard fbee9dd 
 git push --force

edited Feb 09 '19 at 19:16

answered Jul 11 '17 at 07:03

Shubham Verma

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This is dangerous, it makes more sense to clone the repo and checkout a version – user1767754 Jul 11 '17 at 22:01

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 19 '19 at 08:04

The question title is ambiguous.

If you need to get a commit, just use this URL: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/commit/91f256424531030a454548693c3a6ca49ca3f35a.patch (like explain here for the question How to download a single commit-diff from GitHub?)
if you need to download the entire project at the commit you need, use this URL: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/archive/91f256424531030a454548693c3a6ca49ca3f35a.zip
if you need the git revision log, clone the repository and checkout the commit you want.

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 13 '19 at 22:20

As addition to the accepted answer:

To see the hashes you need to use the suggested command "git checkout hash", you can use git log. Hoewever, depending on what you need, there is an easier way than copy/pasting hashes.

You can use git log --oneline to read many commit messages in a more compressed format.

Lets say you see this a one-line list of the commits with minimal information and only partly visible hashes:

hash111 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
hash222 last commit
hash333 I want this one
hash444 did something
....

If you want last commit, you can use git checkout master^. The ^ gives you the commit before the master. So hash222.

If you want the n-th last commit, you can use git checkout master~n. For example, using git checkout master~2would give you the commit hash333.

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 30 '23 at 18:45

To use the Github webpage to do this, here's what I did exactly: go to the commit list -> click the commit number I need to download -> click "Browse Files" on the upper-right of the page -> click the dropdown button "Code" and then click "Download ZIP".

I don't have git terminal and don't want to set up one only for downloading a commit, Sivanand Kheti'S answer helped me to download the commit using webpage browsing, and hope my steps help the same users as myself.

score -1 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 06 '20 at 17:52

write this to see your commits

git log --oneline

copy the name of the commit you want to go back to. then write:

git checkout "name of the commit"

when you do this, the files of that commit will be replaced with your current files. then you can do whatever you want to these and once you're done, you can write the following command to extract the current files into another newly created branch so whatever you make doesn't have any danger for the previous branch that you extracted a commit from

git checkout -b "name of a branch to extract the files to"

right now, you have the content of a specified commit, into another branch .

How to get certain commit from GitHub project

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