cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/214031
Have you ever used
git bisect
? If so, how did you use it? Did it help you find a problem which would otherwise be difficult to find? Story time, I guess?
For those (like me) who were not aware of
git bisect
:The
git bisect
command is a powerful tool that quickly checks out a commit halfway between a known good state and a known bad state and then asks you to identify the commit as either good or bad. Then it repeats until you find the exact commit where the code in question was first introduced.I certainly have! Although I can count on two hands how many times I’ve used it, it has proven to be extremely powerful when trying to pin-point changes that introduced non-trivial bugs. Specifically if the time-span of when the bug was introduced it is very useful to quickly sift through commit history.
Usually when theres a “mystery” bug on something that already worked before. Spending half a day running the build script over and over again, is still faster than debugging in different parts of the codebase with the hope of finding some hint.
Yeah it’s saved my bacon a bunch of times