Question: regarding understanding code base

>
> JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > The main question is
> > What are the best and smallest set of git commands to do this as
> > I can set this up as an alias and use this trick for many other projects too.
>
> Sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to refer to as "this"
> in "commands to do this" and also "this" in "use this trick", so I
> cannot help you here.
>
>

> - Start from the initial commit of a repository
>
> - Walk forward through history (one commit at a time) probably which
> changes my file system (I currently use a terminal based command)
>
> I use
> git rev-list --reverse HEAD | while read commit; do
>   echo "=== Commit: $commit ==="
>   git show --color --stat --patch --pretty=fuller "$commit"
>   read -p "Press enter to continue to the next commit..."
> done
>
> I wanted to know if there are any better ways

>
> JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > What I meant was:
> > You previously suggested that one good way to understand Git is to
> > start from the initial commit of the Git repo and move forward
> > chronologically through the commits.
>
> Not at all.  I only suggested to study the initial one.  It is more
> like biology students learning the common principles that apply to
> all kinds of life by studying a lot simpler organism as a model,
> instead of studying a lot higher order ones like mammals.
>
> Moving forward is all your invention or hallucination ;-)
>

> On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 6:13 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > What I meant was:
>> > You previously suggested that one good way to understand Git is to
>> > start from the initial commit of the Git repo and move forward
>> > chronologically through the commits.
>>
>> Not at all.  I only suggested to study the initial one.  It is more
>> like biology students learning the common principles that apply to
>> all kinds of life by studying a lot simpler organism as a model,
>> instead of studying a lot higher order ones like mammals.
>>
>> Moving forward is all your invention or hallucination ;-)
>>
> Fair enough I have read your biology metaphor
> into a full evolutionary theory.

>
> JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 6:13 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > What I meant was:
> >> > You previously suggested that one good way to understand Git is to
> >> > start from the initial commit of the Git repo and move forward
> >> > chronologically through the commits.
> >>
> >> Not at all.  I only suggested to study the initial one.  It is more
> >> like biology students learning the common principles that apply to
> >> all kinds of life by studying a lot simpler organism as a model,
> >> instead of studying a lot higher order ones like mammals.
> >>
> >> Moving forward is all your invention or hallucination ;-)
> >>
> > Fair enough I have read your biology metaphor
> > into a full evolutionary theory.
>
> I should probably have said "before" instead of "instead of" in the
> above.  You were looking for a way to see what higher order
> organisms there are to study, after learning from the simplest
> organism.
>
> "git log --reverse -p" is a simpler replacement for your shell
> script loop to do so.
>
> If I were doing this, after studying the initial one, I would
> probably see how much of what I learned from the initial version
> remains in 1.0.0, 1.3.0, 1.5.3, and 1.6.0.
>
> 1.5.3 was probably the last version one can read cover to cover in
> one sitting.  Anything after that version are just too big, I think,
> but there probably are those with more patience than I have ;-).

> Le 14 juin 2025 à 08:44, JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> Ok so a couple of weeks ago, in this thread[1]
> Junio advised that one of the best ways to understand git is to go back to the
> _inital commit_ and travel back to the latest ones.
> 
> And I happened to quite like this idea, cause I still have to dig up a
> lot of things in git.
> The main question is
> What are the best and smallest set of git commands to do this as
> I can set this up as an alias and use this trick for many other projects too.

> 
> 1 - https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqfrh3qe2w.fsf@gitster.g/
> 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> - Jayatheerth
> 

>
>
> > Le 14 juin 2025 à 08:44, JAYATHEERTH K <jayatheerthkulkarni2005@gmail.com> a écrit :
> >
> > Ok so a couple of weeks ago, in this thread[1]
> > Junio advised that one of the best ways to understand git is to go back to the
> > _inital commit_ and travel back to the latest ones.
> >
> > And I happened to quite like this idea, cause I still have to dig up a
> > lot of things in git.
> > The main question is
> > What are the best and smallest set of git commands to do this as
> > I can set this up as an alias and use this trick for many other projects too.
>
> If you want a checkout of the root commit, assuming there’s only one, something like
>
>     git rev-list | sed -n \$p | xargs git switch --detach
>
> ought to work. You could feed something similar to git-worktree. But it’s a little harder to “go forward” with Git’s data model, and I didn’t totally understand “travel back to the latest ones.”
>