Re: [PATCH] git-bisect.txt: clarify that reset finishes bisect

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 9, 2013, 23:35 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy5ext60o.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20130209232455.GA31027@rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de>

Andreas Mohr <andi@lisas.de> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 01:53:04PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:
>> >  After a bisect session, to clean up the bisection state and return to
>> > -the original HEAD, issue the following command:
>> > +the original HEAD (i.e., to finish bisect), issue the following command:
>> 
>> Makes sense.
>
> Doesn't ;)
>
> [aww, very sorry for this blunt reply]
>
> The main point of my mail was to stretch the (whether actually intended)
> *perceived* start <-> stop symmetry

Actually, in that sense, I do no think finish is exactly a good wording. The majority of use case would be to finish up after you found the sole culprit, so in that sense "finish" is not too bad, but in general, when you "reset", there is not necessarily any symmmetry with "start". We should definitely not be giving you an illusion that there is one by using "stop" [*1*].

It is more like "abort".

I may be done with bisection after running the bisection to the very end, of I may have realized that the problem is not bisectable due to many reasons (e.g. the sympotom may be intermittent, or it has already become apparent that there are more than one cause of the observed breakage) way before we found "the first bad commit".

And "reset" cleans the bisectoin state and returns to the original HEAD, regardless of the reason why you are cleaning up. If we were to add any explanation to the sentence, I think "finish" makes a lot more sense than "stop".

[Footnote]

*1* another reason to avoid "stop" is that it could mean "I stop here for now, to later come back and start digging again from there", which is not "reset" is about at all.