Bash shell script to find the Git commit with the most changed files.

find-git-commit-with-most-changed-files

#!/bin/bash
#
# find-git-commit-with-most-changed-files -- I needed to test pagination with
# GitHub's pull request files API[1], so I made this script to find the biggest
# commit in a Git repository by iterating over each commit in the repository and
# counting the number of changed files.
#
# Written with assistance from OpenAI's o1-preview model.
#
# [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/pulls/pulls?apiVersion=2022-11-28#list-pull-requests-files

# Check if inside a Git repository
if ! git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo "This script must be run inside a Git repository."
  exit 1
fi

biggest_commit=0
biggest_commit_sha=''

# Iterate over all commits in the repository
git rev-list --all | while read commit_hash; do
  printf '.'

  # Get the number of files changed in this commit
  num_files_changed=$(git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r "$commit_hash" | wc -l)

  if [ "$num_files_changed" -gt "$biggest_commit" ]; then
    biggest_commit=$num_files_changed
    biggest_commit_sha="$commit_hash"

    echo
    echo "New biggest commit: $biggest_commit_sha with $biggest_commit changed files."
  fi

  # Check if the number of files changed is greater than 3000
  #
  # NOTE(ivy): This is to help me find a good pull request to test pagination
  # with GitHub's pull request files API
  if [ "$num_files_changed" -gt 3000 ]; then
    # Output the commit hash and the number of files changed
    echo
    echo '========================================================='
    echo "Commit $commit_hash has $num_files_changed changed files."
    echo '========================================================='
  fi
done

echo "Biggest commit found: $biggest_commit_sha with $biggest_commit changed files."