Chunlin Zhang wrote: > I am writing a script for git-gui's "Tools" menu to diff a file. > I want to checkout an origin file in a tmp directory and use the diff tool. Because you are writing a script, I'd suggest using one of the "low-level commands (plumbing)" listed in git(1). Because you are retrieving a file, it would be one of the "interrogation commands". And because it is a single file, I suppose this should be git cat-file, git unpack-file, or git archive. For example, git cat-file blob HEAD:README will print the contents of README in the HEAD commit. Because I am curious: what exactly would your script be used to do? Can the git diff-tree or git diff-files command help? -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html