Revert Certain File Changes On a Branch

revert-branch-changes.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Base path to prepend to each file
base_path={PATH HERE}

# Check if any file paths were provided
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <file paths>"
    exit 1
fi

# Iterate over each file path supplied as arguments
for file_path in "$@"; do
    # Convert any backslashes (\) to forward slashes (/)
    sanitized_path=$(echo "$file_path" | sed 's|\\|/|g')

    # Remove any leading slash (/)
    sanitized_path=$(echo "$sanitized_path" | sed 's|^/||')

    # Prepend the base path for both source and destination paths
    full_source_path="$base_path$sanitized_path"
    full_dest_path="$base_path$sanitized_path"

    # IMPORTANT: modify `main` to your choosing if that isn't the branch you're comparing against
    git show main:"$sanitized_path" > "$full_dest_path"

    # Check if the command succeeded
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "Processed: $full_dest_path"
    else
        echo "Error processing: $full_dest_path"
    fi

done

Purpose

This script’s purpose is to revert any file(s) to the state they were in before all of your branch’s changes, as compared to a given branch (I supplied main, but you can change this accordingly).

At work, I found that it was often useful to revert certain files' changes I had made in pull requests, without going through rebasing or switching branches to copy the original ones over -> this came to be the easiest way to do it, and I found it very useful on a regular basis. I even started using this script when working on personal projects and developing pull requests.

Usage:

Two important lines for you to edit:

1. line 4: insert your repo's base path (e.g. /Users/daggerpov/Documents/GitHub/{repo_name})
2. line 27: adjust main if that isn't the branch name you'd like to compare against

bash /path/to/revert.sh {files, separated by spaces}

Example: bash /Users/daggerpov/Documents/GitHub/random_code_files/scripts/revert_branch_changes_to_files.sh /Users/daggerpov/Documents/GitHub/Spawn-App-iOS-SwiftUI/Spawn-App-iOS-SwiftUI/Services/DataService/Config/WriteOperationConfig.swift