Re: [PATCH 0/4] make it possible to skip away from broken commits

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> writes:
>> 
>>> This patch series adds a "--ratio=x/y" option to "git bisect skip" so
>>> that it is possible to skip away from an area were the commits cannot
>>> be tested.
>>>
>>> Note that in this series "--ratio=4" means the same as "--ratio=1/4".
>>> But I am not sure if this shortcut is worth it.
>> 
>> Actually my gut feeling is that a tweakable knob itself is worth it,

I meant "is not" worth it.

>> because the user can never tell what the right value should be.
>> 
>> ...  Why not use a constant ratio (or perhaps a pair of alternating
>> ratios) on "bisect skip" without any new options?
>
> I would agree with this assessment....

Thanks for reading what I meant to say, even though I said quite opposite
to what I meant to say ;-)

> When one gets down to a small number of points this could get weird, but
> as long as skip points are filtered (which looks like it's already being
> done) it should converge.

Yes; I think "the next point" selection after "skip" is (or at least can
be handled as) a local thing.  As long as the next point selection is not
too close to the known-to-be-untestable commit we will have a reasonable
coverage over the remainder of the history.  Also I suspect that trying to
be too clever will not help us very much and the end result would be
affected more heavily by the distribution of untestable commits than how
well these next points are chosen.