Git - getting list of changed files into zip file

I had a very old Git branch (NewBranch) where I did some new development. In the meantime, the branch I originally branched from (OriginalBranch) was so different that I only wanted to copy out the changed files into a zip file. I found some funky Git one-liner commands that work on Linux/Mac, but I’m on good old Windows. I managed to do it as follows:

1. Install a zip.exe executable somewhere into your path. I always have a c:\bin folder that is added to my path and I copy all tools into this directory. For zip.exe I use Info-ZIP.
2. Open a command shell and change the directory to the root folder of the branch. I use ConEmu as a shell.
3. Make sure that you have checked out the branch you want to copy files from, i.e. git checkout NewBranch. Make sure you get the latest files using git pull. To see your list of branches and the currently checked out branch use the command git branch -a.
4. Find the commit hash of the first commit in the new branch using the following Git command: git merge-base OriginalBranch NewBranch. This is a value that looks like be61fd84b7abe0b4735a21367ba70db68e5e4ef9. If you want an overview of last commits execute the following command: git log --pretty=format:"%H - %an, %ar: %s". If you don’t like the long commit hashes you can also work with the abbreviated commit hashes. In this case use %h instead.
5. Execute the following command: git diff --name-only be61fd84b7abe0b4735a21367ba70db68e5e4ef9 > diff-filelist.txt. Where you use the commit hash of the commit from where you want to get the files from.
6. Zip the files using the command more diff-filelist.txt | zip -@ files.zip.
7. You can now go back to a more current branch and copy over the files that you need.

Personal blog by Serge van den Oever - als je maar lol hebt...
Twitter: @svdoever
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Technology Consultant @ Macaw
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