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frustrated forensics: hard to find diff that undid a fix

From
Adam Monsen <haircut@gmail.com>
Date
Mar 5, 2011, 06:20 UTC
Message-ID
<4D71D63E.3030907@gmail.com>

I made a fix a month ago on the master branch in a shared repo. A week later, a colleague did a merge that undid the fix. I didn't figure out the problem until just now because I'd been assuming the fix was still on master. I mean, if it wasn't, I should see a reverse patch using "git log -p master", right? Wrong. Turns out the fix was undone as part of merge conflict resolution (I think).

Is there some way to include merge conflict resolutions in "git log -p" or "git show"? Apparently some important information can be hidden in the conflict resolution. Or, more likely, I just don't understand how this bit of git works.

I also tried bisect and pickaxe. Bisect wrongly identified the first bad commit, and pickaxe just didn't see the change at all.

    ~ * ~

Here's some details in case anyone wants to (a) point out where I messed up or (b) help me avoid this kind of blunder in the future.

1. The repo is git://mifos.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/mifos/head
(mirror: https://github.com/mifos/head ). Branch master.
2. My commit 2a1ed0436 introduced a fix that includes the text
"native2ascii". Shows up in "git log -p -1 2a1ed0436" and "git show
2a1ed0436". Life is good.
3. It appears that the merge commit 0f8132386 tossed my "native2ascii"
fix. The only way I could figure out to actually visualize this is "git
diff 58320586..0f813238".
This took a while to figure out. Am I missing something obvious?
Next: Jonathan del Strother
Message 1 of 26 in “frustrated forensics: hard to find diff that undid a fix”
  1. Adam MonsenMar 5, 2011
  2. Jonathan del StrotherMar 5, 2011
  3. Jakub NarebskiMar 5, 2011
  4. Jonathan NiederMar 5, 2011
  5. Jeff KingMar 5, 2011
  6. Adam MonsenMar 5, 2011
  7. 0/2 improve combined diff documentationAdam Monsen, Mar 5, 2011
  8. 1/2 documentation fix: git log -p does not imply -c.Adam Monsen, Mar 5, 2011
  9. Junio C HamanoMar 7, 2011
  10. Jeff KingMar 7, 2011
  11. Junio C HamanoMar 7, 2011
  12. Jeff KingMar 7, 2011
  13. Documentation fix: git log -p does not imply -c.Adam Monsen, Mar 7, 2011
  14. Junio C HamanoMar 8, 2011
  15. Documentation fix: git log -p does not imply -c.Adam Monsen, Mar 8, 2011
  16. Junio C HamanoMar 8, 2011
  17. Adam MonsenMar 8, 2011
  18. Junio C HamanoMar 9, 2011
  19. Adam MonsenMar 9, 2011
  20. SubmittingPatches: clean up commit message tipsAdam Monsen, Mar 9, 2011
  21. Junio C HamanoMar 9, 2011
  22. diff format documentation: clarify --cc and -cAdam Monsen, Mar 8, 2011
  23. diff format documentation: clarify --cc and -cAdam Monsen, Mar 8, 2011
  24. Jeff KingMar 8, 2011
  25. 2/2 English grammar fixes for combined diff doc.Adam Monsen, Mar 5, 2011
  26. Martin von ZweigbergkMar 5, 2011

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