Is there an easy way to navigate to the earliest commit of a large open-source project in GitHub?
The project has over 13,000 commits as of today. I don't want to press the "Older" button on the commit history page hundreds and hundreds of times to get to the initial commit (or first commit).
There's no obvious UI to do this, but there is a way to construct the right URL to go to page one of the commit log.
Suppose we want to find the first commit of the dotnet/runtime repository. First take a note of the number of commits in the repository: it is currently 125,882. Now go to the list of commits (click on commit count), and click "Older" once. The URL will be something like this: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/commits/main?after=2aec3816f9bbc0eda3261daa335a05ea0df31b9c+34
Notice the +34 part. That's how many commits are skipped. Change that to 125,882 minus 1 minus 35 per page, that gives us this URL, which takes you right to the first page of the dotnet/runtime commit history.
Clone the repository, open with the command line and run $ git log --reverse
This will show the commits in reverse order.
Then you can view it on github once you have the ID(Object Name) of the first commit ... something like... https://github.com/UserName/Repo/commit/6a5ace7b941120db5d2d50af6321770ddad4779e
Feb. 2015: In GitHub, is there an easy way to navigate to the earliest commit of a large open source project?
Yes there now is! (Meaning: without cloning the repo, and applying git log in the local clone)
Since January 2017, you have "Navigate file history faster with improved blame view" on GitHub.
Whether you're debugging a regression or trying to understand how some code came to have its current shape, you'll often want to see what a file looked like before a particular change.
With improved blame view, you can easily see how any portion of your file has evolved over time without viewing the file's full history.
Here is a demo getting back to the original oldest commit of the git/git repo itself (47K+ commits)... in three clicks!
The trick here is to chose a file likely to be found in the first (or very early) commit, like a README.md.
On project page click tab Insights > Contributors.
Select the beginning of the histogram.
Click the commits number.
Done.
PS - Draw a small range to get a single page.
You can get to the first page of commits with the following, which I keep as a snippet in Chrome dev tools.
function githubFirstCommitsPage() {
let el = document.querySelector('.repository-content');
let commits = el.querySelector('[aria-label^=Commits]');
let base = commits.closest('a').href;
let count = commits.previousElementSibling
.textContent
.trim()
.replace(/[^\d\.\-]/g, "");
count = count-36;
let sha = el
.querySelector('[data-test-selector="commit-tease-commit-message"]')
.href
.split('/');
sha = sha[sha.length-1];
window.location = `${base}?after=${sha}+${count}`;
}
githubFirstCommitsPage();
You can navigate to a GitHub repository's first commit using the init bookmarklet.
INIT
A bookmarklet to quickly get you to the first commit of a repo.
Overview
Being able to quickly navigate to the oldest commit in a repo is quite helpful. Go ahead and drag the bookmarklet (link) onto your bookmark bar and click it whenever you'd like to go to the first commit of a repo.
Usage
Go to any particular repo's landing page
(e.g. like the one you're on)and click the bookmarklet, which will take you to the first page (initial commit). By default, it tracks themasterbranch, but if you change thebranchon the landing page, it will go to that branch's first commit.
Disclaimer: I contributed a small Readme update to init a few minutes before posting this answer.
You need to use the git log --reverse command of git.
This will return the history of commits for the specified repo in reverse order (oldest to newest).
Then, with the help of some sed magic, you could have something like the date of the first commit (which is what I've seen I've always needed for myself).
git log --reverse | sed -n 3p
Ultimately, you might want to automate this as well (, since it's mostly either boring to type the command or just impossible to remember it), so a shell script like this one might come to the rescue.
This link gives a UI way to do this on GitHub. Summary:
'Insights' tab
Network tab (left side)
Shift + <--
Another simple trick with UI only is to check the git history of the file .gitignore or README.md, 99% of cases, you will find quickly the first commit.
A very easy solution.
Source: thanks to @bpc333 for the awesome tool that makes it possible.
Navigate to the commits page of a GitHub repo
Change 'main' in the code below to whatever the name of the branch is
(function(){(([_, repo, branch='main']) => {fetch(`https://github.com/${repo}/tree/${branch}`).then(res => res.text()).then(res => {let mainDocument = new DOMParser().parseFromString(res, 'text/html');let commitCount = mainDocument.evaluate('//span[@class="d-none d-sm-inline"]//strong', mainDocument.body).iterateNext().innerText;commitCount = Number(commitCount.trim().replaceAll(',', ''));let commitId = mainDocument.evaluate('//*[@class="f6 Link--secondary text-mono ml-2 d-none d-lg-inline"]', mainDocument.body).iterateNext().getAttribute("href").split('/').pop();let url = `https://github.com/${repo}/commits/${branch}?after=${commitId}+${commitCount-10}`;window.location = url;})})(window.location.pathname.match(/\/([^\/]+\/[^\/]+)(?:\/(?:tree|commits|blob)\/([^\/]+))?/))})()
Open the JS console with command + shift + j and paste it in and hit enter, it will navigate to the first commit on that branch.
This second method uses the same code as the first one, but without the bookmark.
