How to “cat” a file in JGit?

Question

A while back I was looking for an embeddable distributed version control system in Java, and I think I have found it in JGit, which is a pure Java implementation of git. How

Answer 1

I have started writing a library called gitective that contains many helpers for working with blobs, commits, and trees using JGit and is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub.

Get content of file in HEAD commit

Repository repo = new FileRepository("/repos/project/.git");
String content = BlobUtils.getHeadContent(repo, "src/Buffer.java");

Get content of a file on a branch

Repository repo = new FileRepository("/repos/project/.git");
String content = BlobUtils.getContent(repo, "master", "src/Buffer.java");

Diff two files

Repository repo = new FileRepository("/repos/project/.git");
ObjectId current = BlobUtils.getId(repo, "master", "Main.java");
ObjectId previous = BlobUtils.getId(repo, "master~1", "Main.java");
Collection<Edit> edit = BlobUtils.diff(repo, previous, current);

More examples of utilities provided are detailed in the README.