Re: finding deleted file names

> On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 12:15:37PM +0930, Geoff Russell wrote:
>
>  > >> Is there something that says "since repository creation", ie., go back as far
>  > >> as possible, but no further? Is there a symbolic name for the initial commit?
>  > >
>  > > There's no symbolic name for it, since there might not be only one initial
>  > > commit. git.git for example has at least three root commits. You will
>  > > probably get what you want with $(git rev-list HEAD|tail -1). If your
>  > > history is very large, $(git rev-list --reverse HEAD|head -1) is slightly
>  > > faster, but usually not enough to offset typing --reverse :).
>  >
>  > Thanks for this, but I'm a little confused.
>  >
>  > If I do a "git init", there must be a first commit after this? Isn't
>  > this the first commit, how
>  > can there be more than one first commit?
>
>
> The confusing part is that you two are talking about two slightly
>  different things. If you define "initial commit" as "the commit which
>  has no parents" then there can be many (you get a new one anytime you
>  merge in a project with unrelated history).
>
>  However, what Geoff originally mentioned was HEAD{'7 days ago'}, which
>  actually looks in the reflog. So if you define "initial commit" as "the
>  first commit value that this ref ever had" then there is only one
>  (though of course, your reflog will eventually expire, so it won't be
>  "the oldest value this ref ever had" but rather "the oldest one the
>  reflog ever remembers it having").