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Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today

104 mentions on Hacker News by 76 people: 16 stories, 88 comments · first 2014-05-25 · latest 2026-09-18

Mentions per year 104 mentions · busiest year 2022 (17)
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  1. …the month after that RFC, by Paul Borman, and the bug is in the very first version of that code: * https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/dc8d504... This bug is not 32 years old.
    comment by JdeBP · 2026-09-18 · in A 32-year-old bug walks into a Telnet server
  2. …for orgs moving old discussion archives into github, see python's issues for reference see: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by 0123456789ABCDE · 2026-08-08 · in Mythos social engineering AISI INC-2026-07-28-01
  3. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by formerly_proven · 2026-05-24 · in Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
  4. …The SCCS date on this file is 1/9/95, a year later. It appears the XNU copy is from Lite1 instead: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-4_4... You'll also see the source has been reorganized, with e.g. the VFS source…
    comment by spijdar · 2026-02-23 · in Linuxulator on FreeBSD Feels Like Magic
  5. …foo does not exist) execv(string+4, args); // /bin/foo execv(string, args); // /usr/bin/foo [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
    comment by age123456gpg · 2026-01-04 · in Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin, usr/sbin split (2010)
  6. I think they’re in the Unix history repo. Browsing there, it may be https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commits/Rese...
    comment by Someone · 2025-12-30 · in UNIX Fourth Edition
  7. Indeed! The repo includes some v4 elements: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/Researc... The provided kernel predates the actual edition by a few months. It is based on https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/…
    comment by DSpinellis · 2025-11-28 · in A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution
  8. …at https://rdcu.be/b7FzE . You may also be interested to see the actual GitHub repository at https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo .
    comment by DSpinellis · 2025-11-28 · in A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution
  9. You might find this repo interesting: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by int_19h · 2025-09-04 · in Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1
  10. Anyone can do this by changing the author and committer date. Take a look at https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo , linked in the comments here, for example.
    comment by kaszanka · 2025-09-03 · in Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1
  11. …enjoyed the datestamps on that repository, you will definitely enjoy the datestamps on this one: * https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo You'll also enjoy the contributors list.
    comment by JdeBP · 2025-09-03 · in Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1
  12. Indeed, that was the way it originally worked in all UNIXes: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... It was a then-important optimization to do the most common operations with macros since calling a function for…
    comment by bodyfour · 2025-07-20 · in Stdio(3) change: FILE is now opaque
  13. …LZW code length based on an estimate of memory that will be available to the process[2]. [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-4_3... [2] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-4_3...
    comment by jasomill · 2024-11-13 · in 80286 ATX mainboard based on the IBM 5170 AT PC
  14. …interesting, too, could be the Repository "Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today" ( https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.git ) from Prof. Diomidis Spinellis.
    comment by mimotomo2009 · 2024-11-06 · in Unix Programmer's Manual Third Edition [pdf] (1973)
  15. …we had granular commit info going back that far. In fact, it's been partially done for FreeBSD, https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo We could in principle do something similar for Darwin (if we had enough of the historical…
    comment by aeadio · 2024-10-12 · in Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good
  16. ….amazon.ca/Lions-Commentary-Unix-John/dp/15739801... this repo has many more versions of unix source: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo I used the book, or tried to use it, to track down the original chroot code, for my own…
    comment by adamgordonbell · 2024-10-03 · in A Commentary on the Sixth Edition of the Unix Operating System (1977)
  17. …sure about other *nixes Should be available on any UNIX, it was added to V7 UNIX back in the 1970s: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... Even before that, it existed as a standalone text file…
    comment by bodyfour · 2024-07-23 · in The Elegance of the ASCII Table
  18. …at 32 and 35 lines of code, respectively. This version also has little error checking. [Here]( https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... ) is a version of wc from UNIX V7, at 86 lines. It allows for counting…
    comment by NunoSempere · 2024-06-20 · in Wc2: Investigates optimizing 'wc', the Unix word count program
  19. There is also https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo (Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today)
    comment by vladak · 2024-04-17 · in F/OSS Comics: 8. The Origins of Unix and the C Language
  20. …Spinellis who runs the Unix History Repository and see if they're interested in adding them. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by mprovost · 2024-03-08 · in The Berkeley Software Distribution
  21. FWIW, ls in Research-V6 back in 1975 had 10 options. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... By BSD 3 in 1980 it had 11 options. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-3-S... The thing is, we can…
    comment by eesmith · 2023-08-19 · in Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well
  22. the guts of visual mode: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1/e...
    comment by mzs · 2023-08-15 · in The original source code of the vi text editor, taken from System V
  23. …(as part of ex, with a 1979 copyright) in 2BSD src/ex, with the main routines at src/ex/ex_vmain.c: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-2-S...
    comment by hovav · 2023-08-15 · in The original source code of the vi text editor, taken from System V
  24. This is what it looked like about 7-8 years earlier: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1/e...
    comment by fargle · 2023-08-12 · in The original source code of the vi text editor, taken from System V
  25. …Note that the RL02 (and V7) and RA92 mentioned in the article are separated by about a decade. [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
    comment by jasomill · 2023-05-11 · in 50 Years in Filesystems: 1974 Unix V7
  26. The earliest version I could find [1] is already written in C. [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
    comment by tcard · 2023-05-09 · in Unix: An Oral History
  27. …decades later, commit history was still available for the Unix sources and could be reconstructed: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo I’ve used 35-year-old commit messages to help understand a long-standing issue, decades…
    comment by catiopatio · 2022-12-12 · in GPT based tool that writes the commit message for you
  28. …there doesn't seem to be any link on his page to this reconstructed commit history in github https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by em500 · 2022-11-28 · in Unix History
  29. …first version of UNIX to include `calloc` was Research UNIX V6, and here's how it was implemented: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... calloc(n, s) { return(alloc(n*s)); } There are several interesting things we…
    comment by LukeShu · 2022-11-13 · in Why does calloc exist? (2016)
  30. In fact, it turns out that it was already in K&R C ten years before C89: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
    comment by int_19h · 2022-11-10 · in Three new utility functions in C++23
  31. tangent: in github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo linked from the article, the default branch is shown to have "∞ commits". Any ideas where this bug comes from? Something related to Unix epoch?
    comment by blt · 2022-11-09 · in What chroot taught me about containers
  32. …since January, in the range 0 to 11. I wonder where C got it? It goes back to at least 1973's V4: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commit/92779...
    comment by jefftk · 2022-08-24 · in Why do arrays start at 0?
  33. The code in question: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commit/389a4...
    comment by LukeShu · 2022-08-11 · in Dotfiles being hidden is a UNIXv2 mistake (2012)
  34. …'tap' archival system uses 'plain binary numbers ("base 256")', not octals. Here's the V7 tar.c: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... and it's documentation: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Re…
    comment by eesmith · 2022-07-23 · in The tar archive format, and why GNU tar extracts in quadratic time
  35. …of the original Unix developers that had been obtained from an old /etc/passwd file in this repo ( https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-3-S... ). Rob Pike spoke out against the effort, calling it “distasteful.”…
    comment by anjbe · 2022-06-16 · in Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today
  36. Anybody feel brave enough to try merging in SVR4? https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/9ecd05bdc59e4a1...
    comment by ninefathom · 2022-06-16 · in Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today
  37. …grandparent seems to have been specifically crafted to use "Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000" https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commit/185f8... .
    comment by judge2020 · 2022-06-16 · in Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today
  38. You don't see this every day: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... Is this B, or is it BCPL? What would have compiled this code back in the day?
    comment by vandahm · 2022-06-16 · in Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today
  39. …been there (or rather in the original location of /usr/pub) since near the dawn of UNIX itself: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/8cf2a84... (Also available as "man ascii" from almost as long ago…
    comment by bodyfour · 2022-06-09 · in OpenBSD folklore and share/misc/airport
  40. …- https://github.com/python/cpython/ - with full commit history back to 1990. The Unix source - https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo - with quite a number of releases dating back to 1970.
    comment by eesmith · 2022-05-18 · in Ask HN: What's the oldest publicly-available repo with different versions?
  41. Here's a copy of dc: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...
    comment by muizelaar · 2022-02-16 · in Lorinda Cherry, author of dc, bc, eqn has died
  42. Here's the commit from 1978: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Bell-32... The comments refer to an "old 127 paste command" but I have no idea what that is.
    comment by mprovost · 2022-01-08 · in Why “process substitution” is a late feature in Unix shells
  43. …yes, it exists even in the earliest versions of the "cal" command, dating back to the mid 1970s: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... The implementation is pretty clever as well. The jan1() function simply…
    comment by bodyfour · 2021-12-24 · in Cal 9 1752
  44. It exists on any UNIX, basically. It was added 40 years ago: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commit/8e0a2...
    comment by bodyfour · 2021-11-02 · in Sysexits – preferable exit codes for programs
  45. …https://fossbytes.com/unix-co-founder-ken-thompsons-bsd-pass... [1] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/BSD-3-S...
    comment by jodrellblank · 2021-04-19 · in Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)
  46. Looks like "someone" was Bill Joy in November 1981: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/commit/3573c... And we have a better clue as to why: there was a separate "sockaddri" that allowed for indirect references for address…
    comment by LukeShu · 2021-04-08 · in A bit of XENIX history (2014)
  47. …just a bunch of utilities that you were supposed to install on an already running AT&T system. [0] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/BSD-1-S...
    comment by mprovost · 2021-02-12 · in Interview with Bill Joy (1984)
  48. …wide. Of course that's the terminal that he also wrote vi on - it has arrows on the hjkl keys. [0] https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-S...
    comment by mprovost · 2021-02-03 · in Digital VT100 (1978)
  49. …to reconstruct a complete source history from the current FreeBSD all the way back to 1970 Unix. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
    comment by em500 · 2021-01-29 · in Unix Programmer's Manual, First Edition (1971)
  50. …at u1.s, you'll see the sysent routine which handles syscalls. The numbering should be familiar :-) https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... If you go to 4.2BSD, you'll see many of these syscalls labeled as "old",…
    comment by spijdar · 2021-01-15 · in Apple M1 Assembly Language Hello World