Given a GitHub repository, how can I quickly find the date of its first commit?
I often want to know how old the project is, but I cannot find a quick way to get to the start of the commit histories for projects with very long commit histories.
GitHub – How to Find Date of First Commit in Repository
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Best Answer
Click on the "Insights" tab of the repository that you want to see the oldest commit, followed by the "Network" sub-tab on the left menu bar. When the page is fully loaded (i.e. you can see lots of lines joining and all), press Shift+← to go all the way to the first commit. Click on the dot that represents the first commit and you can get it.
Note: This only works for repositories that was created on GitHub originally, not repositories that were imported from another place (i.e. commits not registered through GitHub itself). Also, this method may not necessarily work if the repository has too many forks.
Alternatively, you can clone the repository to your local machine and run the following command:
The repository's commits will then be shown in reverse order (oldest commit first).