git-undelete-all.sh

Bash script to undelete everything that is easy to undelete in a Git repository.

$ bash git-undelete-all.sh -h
Usage git-undelete-all [OPTION...]

-h  help: print this usage information
-s  silent: do not print output
-v  verbose: print every file recovered

This script can come in handy when evaluating the history of a repository.

Usage

Copy the script into the repository that you want to undelete files in and run:

bash git-undelete-all.sh

It should output something like:

1 files restored in 0 seconds

If you run with "-v" the script will print the filename of each undeleted file on a separate line.

How it works

It is automating the following process (where "undelete.sh" is a deleted file):

1. List the files that are deleted from the Github repository:

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

2. Which gives you the filenames of the deleted files:

   undelete.sh

3. Then get the hash of the commit in which the file is deleted:

   git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- undelete.sh

4. Which gives you the hash of the undeletion:

   ae85c23372a8a45b788ed857800b3b424b1c15f8

5. Now you can checkout the version of the file before the deletion:

   git checkout ae85c23372a8a45b788ed857800b3b424b1c15f8^ -- undelete.sh

And doing that for every file in the list that is retrieved in step 2.