From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: walt Subject: Bisecting through the middle of a big merge? Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:03:20 -0800 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sat Jan 28 01:04:05 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rqvm1-0000jg-95 for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:04:05 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752552Ab2A1ADl (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:03:41 -0500 Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:46945 "EHLO lo.gmane.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751697Ab2A1ADk (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:03:40 -0500 Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rqvla-0000aS-TU for git@vger.kernel.org; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:03:38 +0100 Received: from adsl-69-234-196-147.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net ([69.234.196.147]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:03:38 +0100 Received: from w41ter by adsl-69-234-196-147.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:03:38 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: adsl-69-234-196-147.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:9.0) Gecko/20120106 Thunderbird/9.0 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: My problem is that I lack a good mental model of what git does when it commits a big merge, and so I get lost when I try to bisect back through a merge. (I'm a tester, not a developer.) This specific recent example is causing me problems: Merge: b3c9dd1 85a0f7b Author: Linus Torvalds Date: Sun Jan 15 12:48:41 2012 -0800 Merge branch 'for-3.3/drivers' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-block There are many individual commits from Tejun Heo et al included in that one big commit from Linus. Unfortunately for me, some of those commits cause other problems that I'm not trying to bisect; other problems that evidently get fixed by other commits in the same big merge. So I do 'git bisect skip' six or eight times until the 'false' bug goes away, and that leaves me at the end of the bisect without finding the individual commit that's causing my 'real' bug. How do you experts handle this kind of problem? Thanks for any clues.