git bisect Tutorial

Hi There!

Welcome to git bisect toturial, this repository is based on A beginner's guide to GIT BISECT - The process of elimination by Tony Rasmussen and the Git official documentation.

What should I do?

In this repo you will find the file test.txt. To make sure the repo is not broken you must ensure that test.txt contains the word "boat".

We marked the first good commit, where test.txt contains the word "boat" for the first time as v1.0, so you can state it as good.

Now, we want you to check if test.txt contains the word "boat". Please open it in your favorite editor and search for it.

It not there... well, that was expected ;)

Now you have the option to use git bisect to find the broken commit where the "boat" disappeared.

To start a binary search for the broken commit, you will have to run:

$ git bisect start

It will start bisect wizard, which will keep changing commits (yes, on your working directory) until you will find the broken commit. If you want to stop it you must run git bisect reset if you want to avoid ending up in a weird state.

You will need to state each commit as good or bad, and the bisect wizard will change to the next commit. For now we know that the curent commit is bad and "v1.0" is good (yes, you can give tags as well as commits), so you just run:

$ git bisect bad
$ git bisect good v1.0

Git bisect change your working directory for the first time, check the file again. If it contains "boat" run git bisect good, else run git bisect bad. Now, do it until git bisect will tells you it found the commit.

On the broken commit you will find an easter egg for how to automated bisect, Good Luck!

Thanks

@chenl and @eliadl for all the great work!