gitgit-bisect

How could I use Git bisect to find the first GOOD commit?

I have the following problem:

Okay. Let's ask our friend git bisect for the revision that fixed the bug:

git bisect start
git bisect bad last
git bisect good master

But that's not going to work:

Some good revs are not ancestor of the bad rev. git bisect cannot work properly in this case. Maybe you mistake good and bad revs?

How can I overcome this? Did I miss something in the documentation?

Solution

  • As of Git 2.7, you can use the arguments --term-old and --term-new.

    For instance, you can identify a problem-fixing commit thus:

    git bisect start --term-new=fixed --term-old=unfixed
git bisect fixed master
git bisect unfixed $some-old-sha1

    As you test, say git bisect fixed or git bisect unfixed as appropriate.

    For versions of Git prior to 2.7

    Instead of temporarily training yourself to think that bad means good and good means bad, why not create some aliases?

    In file ~/.gitconfig, add the following:

    [alias]
        bisect-fixed = bisect bad
        bisect-unfixed = bisect good

    You can start identifying a problem-fixing commit thus:

    git bisect start
git bisect-fixed master
git bisect-unfixed $some-old-sha1

    As you test, say git bisect-fixed or git bisect-unfixed as appropriate.