From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: walt Subject: git-bisect is magical Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:41:18 -0800 Organization: none Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Jan 09 23:43:17 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ew5iv-00088S-TK for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:42:46 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751589AbWAIWmQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jan 2006 17:42:16 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751594AbWAIWmQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jan 2006 17:42:16 -0500 Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2]:49562 "EHLO ciao.gmane.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751589AbWAIWmP (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jan 2006 17:42:15 -0500 Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1Ew5hn-0007tJ-W1 for git@vger.kernel.org; Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:41:36 +0100 Received: from adsl-69-234-210-171.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net ([69.234.210.171]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:41:35 +0100 Received: from wa1ter by adsl-69-234-210-171.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:41:35 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: git@vger.kernel.org X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: adsl-69-234-210-171.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net User-Agent: Mail/News 1.6a1 (X11/20060109) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law states: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. You guys have done it -- I can't distinguish git-bisect from magic. It's wonderful, and thank you! I used it for the first time this morning to find the commit which caused some kernel breakage. I just sent off an email to the developer whose commit did the breakage, and it only took me about 45 minutes. (Now all I need to do is sit back and wait for his reply saying 'You're an idiot!') I have one minor suggestion for howto/isolate-bugs-with-bisect. Linus states: git bisect good ORIG_HEAD <- mark ORIG_HEAD as good (or whatever other known-good thing you booted last) Well, in my case, I new the last good kernel was *two* updates ago, so ORIG_HEAD wasn't the right thing to use. I had to guess what to type instead of 'ORIG_HEAD'. Which leads to one more question: I have my kernel configured to add the -gxxxxxxxx localversion string to the kernel name. I took a wild guess that the xxxxxxxx was the right thing to substitute for 'ORIG_HEAD' and I got lucky. But what about someone who doesn't know the magic 'xxxxxxxx' to use? If I didn't know enough to keep a week's worth of daily kernel-builds with the 'xxxxxxxx' to guide me, would I still be able to do what I did today? (For example, if this had been a 'git' bug instead of a kernel bug, I don't think I could have figured out how to use git-bisect to find the bug -- could I?) Thanks!