Answer by Bertrand Martel for Finding the oldest commit in a GitHub repository via the API

Using the GraphQL API, there is a workaround for getting the oldest commit (initial commit) in a specific branch.

First get the last commit and return the totalCount and the endCursor :

{  repository(name: "linux", owner: "torvalds") {    ref(qualifiedName: "master") {      target {        ... on Commit {          history(first: 1) {            nodes {              message              committedDate              authoredDate              oid              author {                email                name              }            }            totalCount            pageInfo {              endCursor            }          }        }      }    }  }}

It returns something like that for the cursor and pageInfo object :

"totalCount": 931886,"pageInfo": {"endCursor": "b961f8dc8976c091180839f4483d67b7c2ca2578 0"}

I don't have any source about the cursor string format b961f8dc8976c091180839f4483d67b7c2ca2578 0 but I've tested with some other repository with more than 1000 commits and it seems that it's always formatted like:

<static hash> <incremented_number>

So you would just subtract 2 from totalCount (if totalCount is > 1) and get that oldest commit (or initial commit if you prefer):

{  repository(name: "linux", owner: "torvalds") {    ref(qualifiedName: "master") {      target {        ... on Commit {          history(first: 1, after: "b961f8dc8976c091180839f4483d67b7c2ca2578 931884") {            nodes {              message              committedDate              authoredDate              oid              author {                email                name              }            }            totalCount            pageInfo {              endCursor            }          }        }      }    }  }}

which gives the following output (initial commit by Linus Torvalds) :

{"data": {"repository": {"ref": {"target": {"history": {"nodes": [              {"message": "Linux-2.6.12-rc2\n\nInitial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,\neven though we have it. We can create a separate \"historical\" git\narchive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about\n3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early\ngit days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good\ninfrastructure for it.\n\nLet it rip!","committedDate": "2005-04-16T22:20:36Z","authoredDate": "2005-04-16T22:20:36Z","oid": "1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2","author": {"email": "torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org","name": "Linus Torvalds"                }              }            ],"totalCount": 931886,"pageInfo": {"endCursor": "b961f8dc8976c091180839f4483d67b7c2ca2578 931885"            }          }        }      }    }  }}

A simple implementation in python to get the first commit using this method :

import requeststoken = "YOUR_TOKEN"name = "linux"owner = "torvalds"branch = "master"query = """query ($name: String!, $owner: String!, $branch: String!){  repository(name: $name, owner: $owner) {    ref(qualifiedName: $branch) {      target {        ... on Commit {          history(first: 1, after: %s) {            nodes {              message              committedDate              authoredDate              oid              author {                email                name              }            }            totalCount            pageInfo {              endCursor            }          }        }      }    }  }}"""def getHistory(cursor):    r = requests.post("https://api.github.com/graphql",        headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"        },        json = {"query": query % cursor,"variables": {"name": name,"owner": owner,"branch": branch            }        })    return r.json()["data"]["repository"]["ref"]["target"]["history"]#in the first request, cursor is nullhistory = getHistory("null")totalCount = history["totalCount"]if (totalCount > 1):    cursor = history["pageInfo"]["endCursor"].split(" ")    cursor[1] = str(totalCount - 2)    history = getHistory(f"\"{''.join(cursor)}\"")    print(history["nodes"][0])else:    print("got oldest commit (initial commit)")    print(history["nodes"][0])

You can find an example in javascript on this post