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

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Bill Lear <rael@zopyra.com> writes:

> 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"?