[HN Gopher] Congratulations on creating the one billionth reposi...
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       Congratulations on creating the one billionth repository on GitHub
        
       Author : petercooper
       Score  : 168 points
       Date   : 2025-06-11 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | bitpush wrote:
       | curl -s https://api.github.com/repositories/1000000000 { "id":
       | 1000000000, "node_id": "R_kgDOO5rKAA", "name": "shit",
       | "full_name": "AasishPokhrel/shit" }
        
       | samgranieri wrote:
       | Well shit!
        
       | mistersquid wrote:
       | Is this what folks mean by enshittification?
        
         | arcanemachiner wrote:
         | For anyone wondering, the name of the repo is literally "shit".
        
       | Cyphase wrote:
       | I'm wondering if AasishPokhrel created this repo for the purpose
       | of being the billionth.
        
         | joshdavham wrote:
         | I highly doubt it, but that does sound possible.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | It's pretty easy to game this. Just keep creating repos till
         | you hit # one billion and remove the old ones. Their API makes
         | it trivial. The only issue will be rate limits, so it's a
         | matter of luck.
        
           | recursive wrote:
           | I don't believe they will renumber the old ones. Also, it
           | can't be trivial, since two people can try this, and only one
           | can win.
        
             | handfuloflight wrote:
             | There is always one trillion to look forward to!
        
             | paxys wrote:
             | I don't know if are two people in the world with
             | such...interesting life goals simultaneously. But yes, like
             | I said ultimately it's a matter of luck because someone can
             | just randomly create this repo.
        
           | GodelNumbering wrote:
           | There was a guy who got fired from Meta for creating
           | excessive automated diffs in pursuit of a certain magic
           | number
        
         | maniacalhack0r wrote:
         | AasishPokhrel made 2 repos yday - shit and yep. no activity
         | between may 17th and june 10th.
         | 
         | i have no idea if its possible to calculate the rate at which
         | repos are being created and time your repo creation to hit
         | vanity numbers
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | What a waste of a repo. Can anyone find what the 999,999,999 repo
       | was? So we can see what could have been?
        
         | PenguinRevolver wrote:
         | https://api.github.com/repositories/999999999
         | 
         | Which leads to https://github.com/sameepabadhuge/fork1
        
           | deadbabe wrote:
           | That repo is substantially more fascinating, and could have
           | used the attention. What a shame. Who was the next repo,
           | 1,000,000,001?
        
             | KTibow wrote:
             | It doesn't exist. Turns out GitHub has a lot of private and
             | deleted repos.
             | 
             | (Then there's 1000000002,
             | https://github.com/minseon-01/flaskapp, similar to
             | 999999999 in that it's a fork)
        
             | ihuman wrote:
             | Right now it 404s. 1000000002 is
             | https://github.com/minseon-01/flaskapp
        
           | levocardia wrote:
           | >Repo 999999999: pushing forward the cutting edge of protein
           | folding research
           | 
           | >Repo 1000000000: shit
        
             | TZubiri wrote:
             | The duality of programming
        
           | SalariedSlave wrote:
           | So the count includes forks?
           | 
           | Would be interesting to know the billionth non-fork source
           | repo.
        
       | fHr wrote:
       | repo named shit LMFAO nice
        
       | joshdavham wrote:
       | This is actually incredible.
        
       | umanwizard wrote:
       | On a serious note, I'm a bit surprised that GitHub makes it
       | trivial to compute the rate at which new repositories are
       | created. Isn't that kind of information usually a corporate
       | secret?
        
         | raincole wrote:
         | Is there any reason for GitHub to hide this information though?
         | How could it be used against them?
         | 
         | (I understand many companies default to not expose any
         | information unless forced otherwise.)
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | The rate of creation is like meh, but being able to enumerate
           | all of the repos might be problematic, following new repos
           | and scanning them for leaked credentials could be a
           | negative... but github may have a feed of new repos anyway?
           | 
           | Also, having a sequence implies at least a global lock on
           | that sequence during repo creation. Repo creation could
           | otherwise be a scoped lock. OTOH, it's not necessarily
           | handled that way --- they could hand out ranges of sequences
           | to different servers/regions and the repo id may not be
           | actually sequential.
        
         | cheschire wrote:
         | When your moat is a billion wide, you tend to walk around in
         | your underwear a bit more I guess.
        
           | 90s_dev wrote:
           | Excellent Diogenes quote reference.
        
       | jaynate wrote:
       | The repo three comma club
        
         | badc0ffee wrote:
         | Tres commas
        
           | cheschire wrote:
           | Commits that go like \o/ this.
        
       | 9dev wrote:
       | Sigh. You can't make that shit up. I'm sure there's a witty
       | metaphor in there, somewhere...
        
       | 8organicbits wrote:
       | While we are doing cool GitHub repo IDs, the first is here:
       | 
       | https://api.github.com/repositories/1
       | 
       | https://github.com/mojombo/grit
        
       | Aachen wrote:
       | Makes me wonder how many repositories exist in general, from all
       | the local Forgejo and Gitlab servers. Heck, include Subversion
       | and Mercurial and git's other friends (and foes!)
       | 
       | Did anyone make a search engine for these yet, so we'd be able to
       | get an estimate by searching for the word "a" or so?
       | 
       | (This always seemed like the big upside of centralised GitHub to
       | me: people can actually find your code. I've been thinking of
       | making a search since MS bought HG but didn't think I could do
       | the marketing aspects and so it would be a waste of effort and I
       | never did it. Recently I was considering whether this would be
       | worth revisiting, with the various projects I'm putting on
       | Codeberg, but maybe someone beat me to the punch)
        
       | 90s_dev wrote:
       | This is either staged,
       | 
       | or incredible commentary on _most github repos_ ,
       | 
       | having no purpose, never being realized, and even having given up
       | _dreaming_.
        
       | caleblloyd wrote:
       | Awesome! Only a little over a billion more to go before GitHub's
       | very own OpenAPI Spec can start overflowing int32 on repositories
       | too, just like it already does for workflows run IDs!
       | 
       | https://github.com/github/rest-api-description/issues/4511
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-11 23:00 UTC)