> Arguably, it would be better if GitHub documented an explicit number of supported commits, so that one can know beforehand which usage scenarios the service is suitable for.

I don't agree. Clearly GitHub can easily handle this number of commits, and more. There was no real world limit being hit. There is no user impact or degraded performance.

This means that in practice there is absolutely no practical limit in GitHub.

Why document that? Are you planning on working on pushing more than 22 million commits into a project? And if you are, what stops you from sending an email to GitHub to clarify if it supports your extraordinary usecase?

It seems some people around here are desperate to find any flaw in the way GitHub handled this case of vandalismz and at best are grasping at straws.

And what if github didn't have such mechanism? They should swallow the loss as they should have known better? And more importantly, as they weren't documented, how could the author be certain there is a safeguard and he won't cause any harm?