From 8aa7b31a8f0178c06db4eb267d766086c8a21536 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2016 21:30:22 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Add Find The Initial Commit as a git til

---
 README.md                      |  1 +
 git/find-the-initial-commit.md | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 17 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 git/find-the-initial-commit.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 242fb73..e864f14 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ _317 TILs and counting..._
 - [Determine The Hash Id For A Blob](git/determine-the-hash-id-for-a-blob.md)
 - [Dry Runs in Git](git/dry-runs-in-git.md)
 - [Excluding Files Locally](git/excluding-files-locally.md)
+- [Find The Initial Commit](git/find-the-initial-commit.md)
 - [Grab A Single File From A Stash](git/grab-a-single-file-from-a-stash.md)
 - [Grep Over Commit Messages](git/grep-over-commit-messages.md)
 - [Ignore Changes To A Tracked File](git/ignore-changes-to-a-tracked-file.md)
diff --git a/git/find-the-initial-commit.md b/git/find-the-initial-commit.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96fc079
--- /dev/null
+++ b/git/find-the-initial-commit.md
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+# Find The Initial Commit
+
+By definition, the initial commit in a repository has no parents. You can
+exploit that fact and use `rev-list` to find the initial commit; a commit
+with no parents.
+
+```bash
+$ git rev-list --max-parents=0 HEAD
+```
+
+The `rev-list` command lists all commits in reverse chronological order. By
+restricting them to those with at most 0 parents, you are only going to get
+root commits. Generally, a repository will only have a single root commit,
+but it is possible for there to be more than one.
+
+See `man git-rev-list` for more details.