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Bisecting through the middle of a big merge?

From
Wwalt <w41ter@gmail.com>
Date
Jan 28, 2012, 00:03 UTC
Message-ID
<jfve09$ih5$1@dough.gmane.org>

My problem is that I lack a good mental model of what git does when it commits a big merge, and so I get lost when I try to bisect back through a merge. (I'm a tester, not a developer.)

This specific recent example is causing me problems:
Merge: b3c9dd1 85a0f7b
Author: Linus Torvalds
Date:   Sun Jan 15 12:48:41 2012 -0800
    Merge branch 'for-3.3/drivers' of git://git.kernel.dk/linux-block

There are many individual commits from Tejun Heo et al included in that one big commit from Linus. Unfortunately for me, some of those commits cause other problems that I'm not trying to bisect; other problems that evidently get fixed by other commits in the same big merge.

So I do 'git bisect skip' six or eight times until the 'false' bug goes away, and that leaves me at the end of the bisect without finding the individual commit that's causing my 'real' bug.

How do you experts handle this kind of problem?
Thanks for any clues.
Next: Andreas Schwab
Message 1 of 5 in “Bisecting through the middle of a big merge?”
  1. waltJan 28, 2012
  2. Andreas SchwabJan 28, 2012
  3. waltJan 28, 2012
  4. Andreas SchwabJan 28, 2012
  5. waltJan 28, 2012

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