Reading Document Snapshot Contents

Reading a Document Snapshot as a File or Folder

As of 2023, to read the contents of a document snapshot into a local file or folder, you need to use Git directly. If a document succession is archived, the document snapshots can be viewed online.

A document snapshot can be either a file or a directory. After running the command:

hidos dsi --editions branch_name

a SWHID and edition number will be listed for each document snapshot. A SWHID starts with swh:1:cnt: or swh:1:dir: for files and directories, respectively.

If the document snapshot is in the Software Heritage Archive, you can append the SWHID to https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ to view the document snapshot.

To read a document snapshot locally, you can use Git. The last part of a SWHID, which is the suffix following swh:1:cnt: or swh:1:dir:, is a Git hash. By using the displayed Git hash listed for an edition (output by hidos dsi --editions), you can use Git to output the document snapshot:

git show <hash>

If the document snapshot is a file, the file contents will be output. For a directory, a listing of contained files will be printed. To output a file inside the directory given its path, use the following command:

git show <hash>:<path>