These are commits from the "dark ages" and doesn't mean he didn't test his code locally. The "public" TDD culture didn't really surface until Kent Beck et-al published their TDD manifestos in the early 2000's.
Testing did not spring forth as a concept from Kent Beck’s head: it was widely expected in, for example, Perl code on CPAN in the mid to late 90s and that was far from unique. The tools were worse or mostly paid for some languages (e.g. C) so there was more variation and justifications for not doing it.
These are commits from the "dark ages" and doesn't mean he didn't test his code locally. The "public" TDD culture didn't really surface until Kent Beck et-al published their TDD manifestos in the early 2000's.