Undo git reset -- file, git checkout -- file

Question

I was using a Git tool that ran git reset -- myfile.dart and git checkout -- myfile.dart which discarded changes against my wishes.

Is there any way to restore these discarded changes?

I can't find anything in git reflog to help me restore.

Answer 1

Unfortunately there isn't a direct way, the good news though is that since your file was git added its content is still somewhere in git internal storage.

---

Copying the content of my answer to this other question :
Restore git files deleted after git merge --abort

Run :

git fsck --full --unreachable --no-reflog | grep blob

(note: "blob" is the internal word for "file" within git storage).

This should give you a list of internal git hashes :

unreachable blob 08bf360988858a012dab3af4e0b0ea5f370a2ae8
unreachable blob 21bf7ea93f9f9cc2b3ecbed0e5ed4fa45c75eb89
unreachable blob 08c12ef37075732cf4645269ab5687ba6ba68943
...

note that git add myfile.dart stores the file's content, not the file's name ...

If you remember a specific string in your file, you can try to narrow your research by using git grep <string> <hash> :

$ git fsck --full --unreachable --no-reflog | grep blob | awk '{ print $3 }' > list.txt
$ cat list.txt | while read blob; do
  if git grep -q "string" $blob; then
    echo $blob
  fi
done

You can then view the whole content of a blob using :

git show $blob

and hopefully find back the file you were looking for :

git show $blob > myfile.dart