Re: Allow git bisect to auto-skip

From: Olliver Schinagl <oliver@schinagl.nl>
Date: Mar 23, 2024, 20:51 UTC
Message-ID: <4cf100aa-4239-4377-b20a-7c90443fb405@schinagl.nl>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqle68x008.fsf@gitster.g>

On 23-03-2024 19:43, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> Stefan Haller <lists@haller-berlin.de> writes:
> 
>> On 22.03.24 23:31, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>> It often is discovered that a commit
>>> breaks bisection after the fact and it is not feasible to rebase
>>> all the history after the commit.
>>
>> This reminds me of a similar problem with git blame, for which we have
>> the blame.ignoreRevsFile config to work around it. Couldn't there be a
>> similar mechanism for bisect, e.g. bisect.skipRevsFile?
> 
> A Very good point.  If a breakage of a commit is "this does not even
> build" kind of breakage, such a mechanism would be an excellent fit.
> 
> But if a breakage is "only this particular test fails and we know
> the reason why it fails has nothing to do with the bug we are
> chasing", then compiling such a fixed list of commits, or pointing
> at such a list with a configuration variable, would not work very
> well, I am afraid.

This changes my view of the issue a little bit. Building vs testing, though in reality its the same of course.

I can totally see that a user would need a special bisect script to handle these cases 'this commit breaks test 54, 43 and 12; but the rest work'. This is too specific to handle generically. Probably in using a similar trick, store in the notes what works and does not work.

I think it still stands that having a 'generic' way of telling bisect to skip the entire commit is still reasonable. Kind of like how you can do `git push -o ci.skip=true` with GitLab.

Olliver

> 
> Thanks.