Git Checkout at Previous Timeframe

By  on  

In the past I've blogged about checking out branches created on a specific date as well as sorting git branches by date, but one frequent usage of git and dates is checking out a commit at a given time in the past. For example, I often say "Weird, this feature was working a month ago" or "We removed that UI two months ago, how did it look again?". I don't care about the branch previous to the change, I just want to go back a given timeframe and see something.

The following git command allows you checkout the commit closest to the given date and time:

git checkout 'master@{2018-09-01 01:00:00}'

This command is incredibly useful -- I use it almost daily!

Recent Features

  • By
    Being a Dev Dad

    I get asked loads of questions every day but I'm always surprised that they're rarely questions about code or even tech -- many of the questions I get are more about non-dev stuff like what my office is like, what software I use, and oftentimes...

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!