> git log | grep -- find the hash of the one I want.
This misses the point of the problem -- the point is you don't know precisely what string to grep for.
> or git log > file and look at it in an editor. no need to change the tools just for this unusual action.
I mean, nobody said this 1 reason should be enough to make you switch tools? I was just giving an example.
And no, it's not "unusual" just because you say so to try to dismiss the problem. I know I use Browse Repository as well as the GUI logs pretty frequently, and they're godsends compared to your solution.
And lastly: this is what your solution actually looks like:
1. Dump the entire log output into a temporary file
2. Open that temp file in your editor
3. Look through the commit messages/dates/names
4. Realize that's not quite enough to narrow down your search to a single commit (maybe you want to see the diffs or file paths or something else?)
5. Try to figure out which flags you should to pass to git log to dump all the info you need
6. Call git log again, hopefully now it dumps all the info you need
7. Open the temp file again in your editor
8. Scroll through your file containing diffs/names/whatever extra info you dumped
9. Type 'git checkout COMMIT -- file/path' once you find something
10. (Hopefully,) before you press Enter, realize you're about to trash your current copy of the file, which had some other changes
11a. Run git stash, and now suddenly messing up your staging area that you'd carefully staged changes in, and also messing up the file metadata (e.g. Make will now rebuild everything...), OR
11b. Figure out how to run git checkout-index -a -f --prefix=/destination/path/ so that you check the file out into a different directory.
12. Once you have a copy of that file, look through it, maybe examine/pull out the code you wanted (or whatever)
13. Remove the temporary file you checked out.
14. Remove the temporary file in your editor.
15. git stash pop.
And somehow you always do all the above without making a mistake, otherwise have fun reverting or recovering lost data.
With a GUI log TortoiseGit's log, you literally:
1. Click on a commit with the date you're interested in
2. Select Browse Repository
3. Double-click each file you want to examine to see the diff
4. If it's not the file you want, press Escape and click again.
Not only is the number of steps smaller, each one is also significantly faster, and less risky too. No need to mess with a single temporary file, fire up your editor manually, or risk losing anything.
Anyway, again: this was just 1 example meant to get the idea across, hopefully with the aid of your imagination to extrapolate to other scenarios. But if you're going to trash this all with "this never comes up" I don't really have the energy or interest to keep bringing up examples or try to convince anyone; you should just keep using the CLI.