Restore a deleted folder in a Git repo

Everything you can do with a file, you can do with a folder too.

Also note Find and restore a deleted file in a Git repository

Files are deleted from working tree but not committed yet:

If you have not yet indexed (git add) your changes you can revert content of a directory:

git checkout -- path/to/folder

If the deletion is already indexed, you should reset that first:

git reset -- path/to/folder
git checkout -- path/to/folder

Restore the full working tree (not a single folder), but lose all uncommitted changes

git reset --hard HEAD

When files are deleted in some commit in the past:

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn't in the HEAD commit, this commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file_path>

Then checkout the version at the commit before, using the caret (^) symbol:

git checkout <deleting_commit>^ -- <file_path>

Restore the full working tree from a distant commit

git reset --hard <revision> 

You can restore files or folder with git restore.

git restore --source master~1 "PATH_IN_YOUR_REPO"

Here, master~1 reverts your folder to "1" revision back from your master branch.

Source: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-restore

If you have not yet commited your changes you can revert content or a directory:

git checkout -- removed_directory

If you want to revert all changes do:

git reset --hard HEAD

The only thing that worked for me was to checkout the repo in another folder. Assume the current repo is in /home/me/current.

I then did

git clone /home/me/current /home/me/temp

This make a separate clone of the repo in /home/me/temp

I can now go to /home/me/temp and do whatever I want. For example

git reset --hard commit-hash-before-delete

Now I can copy the deleted file folder back

cp -r /home/me/temp/some/deleted/folder /home/me/current/some/deleted/folder

And delete the temp folder

rm -rf /home/me/temp

The examples of

git checkout -- some/deleted/folder
git checkout -- some/deleted/folder/*

DO NOT WORK

$ git checkout -- some/deleted/folder/*
zsh: no matches found: some/deleted/folder/*
$ git checkout -- some/deleted/folder
error: pathspec 'some/deleted/folder' did not match any file(s) known to git.

Other examples like

git reset --hard HEAD

are destructive beyond just the deleted files. Any other changes will also be lost.

Similarly

git reset --hard some-commit

will lose any commits after some-commit

As of git 2.24.0, there's an experimental new git command: git restore

git restore --staged some/deleted/folder