`repo-age` should display the date of the first commit #2660

see https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/2526#issuecomment-556219779

Well, I'm okay with an extra query. Plus this mode could be disabled by default if this many queries is too much for someone.

"Disabled by default" means most people don't need it, so it doesn't belong to Refined GitHub. In that case, it's best to keep it as a standalone userscript or extension. https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/pull/2625#issuecomment-565821485

Projects imported to GitHub is too much of an edge-case. What we could do is to add a tooltip that says that the age is the GitHub repo ago.

What we could do is to add a tooltip that says that the age is the GitHub repo ago.

And/or this issue can stay open as a wish to improve on the feature if possible.

is too much of an edge-case

Not at all. Most of the today's well-established projects were hosted somewhere else. A lot of them survived multiple migrations and CVSs.

A good example would be CPython: migrated ~2 years ago, first commit ~20 years ago. https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/7f777ed95a19224294949e1b4ce56bbffcb1fe9f

I think the tootip says it all "Repository Created...." is has nothing to do with the commit date. Its when the github project was created

Not at all. Most of the today's well-established projects were hosted somewhere else. A lot of them survived multiple migrations and CVSs.

I think (IMHO) the repo age is most beneficial for repo's that are not widely known and the user would like to know its age. For the large projects there is no real benefit knowing when they went into existence. Again JMO

Edge case or not, if it was easy to get the first commit date I’d prefer that over “repo created”, which is just a GitHub event rather than the source’s birth date.

We could still also display the Created date in the tooltip for clarity

Just stumbled upon this and after a quick Google search, found a way to fetch the first commit date for a repository. Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/a/49647826/4248342

This certainly is not feasible with 1 HTTP request, we need to make 2 HTTP requests.

e.g. I tried it for https://github.com/python/cpython/ and it seems to be working fine. Number of commits: 106075 (Count is available on the repo code page)

1. Navigate to the commits page. (1st request)
2. Pick the URL from the pagination Older button which is https://github.com/python/cpython/commits/master?after=b19c0d77e6f25ea831ab608c71f15d0d9266c8c4+34.
3. Modify the count after + with 106075 - 34 - 1 (last commit) = 106040 New URL: https://github.com/python/cpython/commits/master?after=b19c0d77e6f25ea831ab608c71f15d0d9266c8c4+106040 and visit it. (2nd request)
4. The last item on this page is the first commit on this default branch. We can pick the date and time from there which is 1990-08-09T14:25:15Z

What do you all think?

@hardikmodha You have the last commit and count on the repo page. See https://github.com/bpceee/oldest/blob/master/oldest.js

Haha..just realized it after your comment. We do have the last commit. It will be only 1 HTTP request.

@hardikmodha but it will have to wait until the page loaded

Yeah, that is there but wouldn't that be okay? Since it would be a one-time request and first commit isn't supposed to change so we can cache it forever. What do you think?

@hardikmodha maybe a loader? like https://github.com/hardikmodha/refined-github/blob/fix_tags_dropdown/source/features/tags-dropdown.tsx#L26-L28

🎉 Indeed it takes one HTTP request if you have the latest commit and commit count:

https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/commits/master?after=a76ed868a84cd0078d8423999faaba7380b0df1b+1571

a76ed868a84cd0078d8423999faaba7380b0df1b is the latest commit and 1573 is the visible commit count (-2)

@yakov116 I don't think that would be feasible here since we need to wait for the .overall-summary to load to figure out a place to append the repo age. https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/blob/master/source/features/repo-age.tsx#L44 So I'm not sure where to display the loader.

Maybe say Loading...

so we can cache it forever.

It can change because it can be force-pushed or the default branch can be switched to a different tree.

@webknjaz Yeah, it is possible. If default branch is changed then it will display wrong first commit date. E.g. Just found out that ydkjs has changed it's default branch from master to 2nd-ed https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS. If we have some way of knowing the oldest branch then this would be correct.

@fregante Not sure which one can be more frequent. Migrated repos vs different default branches. 🤔 Also, Not sure if we should do it, but a thought, we can fetch both the repo created date using API and fetch the date of first commit, whichever is older we can display that. But then it will be 2 requests.

In this situation specifically, you're talking about force-pushes and default branch updates that change the very first commit. I'd say that's so rare it's not even worth discussing.

I'm not particularly worried about displaying slightly-off age information in that situation, it's not critical information.

Ideally yes, we'd show the earliest date between first commit and createdAt, but it's not worth 2 requests.

Ideally yes, we'd show the earliest date between first commit and createdAt, but it's not worth 2 requests.

I get your point but the request will be made only for the first time (and when the cache expires that is 30 days). Also, the requests are independent of each other.