"Julia Evans" <julia@xxxxxxx> writes:
> $ git checkout HEAD:Documentation/ git-commit.adoc
>
> to restore `file.txt` into a different directory than it was originally.
It probably is handy when you want to cross a rename boundary to
backport a new thing into an old history (or vice versa). Something
like
$ git checkout v1.0.0
$ git checkout v1.7.1:builtin cat-file.c
perhaps.
> What I would tell a friend is
> "<tree-ish> 99% of the time just means "commit or something
> which resolves to a commit, but Git has made it more general for
> a reason I don't understand", but of course that's not the right
> thing to say in the Git documentation :)
You are describing commit-ish (which allows an annotated or signed
tag that points at a commit).
