Re: How to say HEAD~"all the way back - 1"

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Feb 22, 2007, 20:12 UTC
Message-ID: <7vodnmdk8y.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <17885.60477.53356.123095@lisa.zopyra.com>

Bill Lear <rael@zopyra.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Git "indexing" of commits has a way to "go back":
>
> % git diff HEAD~3
>
> Can I say "all the way back", or "all the way back - 1" somehow?

Sorry, there is no such shorthand, but you could obviously say:

	$ git rev-list --parents HEAD | grep -v ' '

A way to find the root commit seems to be one of the things people new to git want at least once, once they start futzing with the tool. But I suspect that is only because they need that information to see how the tool works (say "what different output would I get out of 'git show $commit' for root and other commits?"), and not because they need that information for any real life use.

Really, what useful purpose does it serve for you to find out the root commit, OTHER THAN being able to say "the development history of this project starts at this commit"?