为什么我在 git 结帐时收到文件丢失的错误消息？

Question

I am trying to checkout a specific file from my remote master because when I previously pulled in all the new changes from master(via rebase), it deleted certain files from my local repo. I figured that for some reason those files were missing from the master, except they aren't and I see them clear as day in the remote repo. Why does git not recognize those files exist?

The command:

git checkout origin/master FormFieldHistoryViewModel.cs

The error:

error: pathspec 'FormFieldHistoryViewModel.cs' did not match any file(s) known to git

I can see the file sitting there in the repo on Azure Devops. What is going on?

EDIT: sorry, should've mentioned I tried fetching and pulling before posting this.

Answer 1

I am thinking you are seeing those files, but you don't have a local copy of them. You could try using git fetch before your git checkout command and see if that solves it.

Answer 2

Expanding on @The2Step's answer . (please select that as the accepted answer)

As we all know git is a distributed source control repo, you always have a complete local copy of the repo's history, and you need to operate with pull and push operations.

When you're viewing something in Azure Devops or a GitHub page, you are directly viewing the latest remote version of the code.

Simulation

Running the following code will simulate OP's state:

# run this if in PowerShell on windows, it will add a simple touch for
# the code below to work
# function touch([string]$Path){New-Item -ItemType File -Path $Path -Value ''}
mkdir git-playground; cd git-playground
mkdir origin; cd origin
git init -b master
touch first-file.txt
git add first-file.txt
git commit -m="first file committed"

cd ..; git clone origin local; cd origin
touch new-file.txt
git add new-file.txt
git commit -a -m="new file committed"

cd ../local

Reproduction

At this point you will be in the local directory, pointing to the master branch but with an older version of the repo.

Thus, running the following command:

git checkout origin/master new-file.txt

will producer the following error:

error: pathspec 'new-file.txt' did not match any file(s) known to git

@The2Step's Solution

I'm guessing OP doesn't want to pull at this time, and just wants to cherry-pick a file from the latest origin/master branch, and so you first step is to update the local repo with the necessary information from origin . That's done by running:

git fetch

output of this example scenario for me was:

git fetch                                                                                                                                                                remote: Enumerating objects: 3, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 2 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (2/2), 229 bytes | 5.00 KiB/s, done.
From C:/_/Code/git-playground/origin
   bb77593..26b1794  master     -> origin/master

and run the cherry-pick checkout once more:

git checkout origin/master new-file.txt

which should now work out:

Updated 1 path from 550c46d

Some more details

Checking status

git status

will show that we are behind (because we never pull ed), and will show the new file we checked out as a change of the branch:

On branch master
Your branch is behind 'origin/master' by 1 commit, and can be fast-forwarded.
  (use "git pull" to update your local branch)

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
        new file:   new-file.txt

---

TIP: fetch is non-destructive

It is the step that makes the connection between the distributed copies of the repo. Always use it before operations with a remote .