Re: [BUG] git bisect start fails when stale bisect data is left behind

From: Joel Kaasinen <joel@zenrobotics.com>
Date: Sep 7, 2011, 06:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CAC6WLetO-KKkHmPHJ64rt6+BMbhUHUtNfxF3GK4obMUAuE9XXQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vehztaan4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 19:38, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

> I do not necessarily think this is a bug to begin with --- the user had a
> bad state, and bisect stopped without doing further damage.

Oh, actually my git-bisect man page says:

"""
   Bisect reset
       After a bisect session, to clean up the bisection state and return to
       the original HEAD, issue the following command:

           $ git bisect reset

       By default, this will return your tree to the commit that was checked
       out before git bisect start. (A new git bisect start will also do that,
       as it cleans up the old bisection state.)
"""

The parenthetical sentence seems to imply that a bisect start cleans out the old state. The problem is that the cleaning fails when the state is bad. (Try e.g. "git bisect start; git bisect start a b" where a and b are valid refs.)

It's pretty much the same to me how this gets resolved. I'm fine with a more verbose error message from bisect start.

–J