git checkout - Restore a deleted folder in a Git repo

Question

I have deleted all the contents inside a folder and the folder is empty. I still had a copy in my remote repo. But when I did a git pull it didn't put back the deleted files isn't is supposed to do that?

So I did some research and saw that you can revert a file by doing git checkout <revision> -- <name of file>

But that only works on files.

How can I retrieve all the files inside the directory?

Answer 1

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>