get all historical versions of a file in a git repo

Question

I'd like to retrieve all the historical versions of a file in a git repo, and save them into multiple files. I am thinking of making a script to checkout all the commit tags one by one and save the target file, but is there any easier way to do this? Thanks!

Answer 1

git rev-list --all --objects -- path/to/file.txt

lists you all the blobs associated with the repo path

To get a specific version of a file

git cat-file -p commitid:path/to/file.txt

Answer 2

for file in $(git log --format="%H" --all --follow --name-status   -- <path/to/your/file> | egrep '\w' | perl -pe 's/([0-9a-f]{40})\n/\1/' | perl -pe 's/(.{40}).*\s(\S+)$/\1:\2/'); do git cat-file -p $file > content_of_$(echo $file | cut -c -40); done

This assumes that there are no whitespace characters in you file's names or paths. (There should no be anyway.)