The command takes various subcommands, and different options depending
on the subcommand:
- git bisect start [--no-checkout] [<bad> [<good>...]] [--] [<paths>...]
- git bisect bad [<rev>]
- git bisect good [<rev>...]
+ git bisect start [--term-{old,good}=<term> --term-{new,bad}=<term>]
+ [--no-checkout] [<bad> [<good>...]] [--] [<paths>...]
+ git bisect (bad|new) [<rev>]
+ git bisect (good|old) [<rev>...]
+ git bisect terms [--term-good | --term-bad]
git bisect skip [(<rev>|<range>)...]
git bisect reset [<commit>]
git bisect visualize
down the range until it finds the exact commit that introduced the
change.
+In fact, `git bisect` can be used to find the commit that changed
+*any* property of your project; e.g., the commit that fixed a bug, or
+the commit that caused a benchmark's performance to improve. To
+support this more general usage, the terms "old" and "new" can be used
+in place of "good" and "bad", or you can choose your own terms. See
+section "Alternate terms" below for more information.
+
Basic bisect commands: start, bad, good
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
current bisection commit and avoid switching commits at all.
+Alternate terms
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Sometimes you are not looking for the commit that introduced a
+breakage, but rather for a commit that caused a change between some
+other "old" state and "new" state. For example, you might be looking
+for the commit that introduced a particular fix. Or you might be
+looking for the first commit in which the source-code filenames were
+finally all converted to your company's naming standard. Or whatever.
+
+In such cases it can be very confusing to use the terms "good" and
+"bad" to refer to "the state before the change" and "the state after
+the change". So instead, you can use the terms "old" and "new",
+respectively, in place of "good" and "bad". (But note that you cannot
+mix "good" and "bad" with "old" and "new" in a single session.)
+
+In this more general usage, you provide `git bisect` with a "new"
+commit has some property and an "old" commit that doesn't have that
+property. Each time `git bisect` checks out a commit, you test if that
+commit has the property. If it does, mark the commit as "new";
+otherwise, mark it as "old". When the bisection is done, `git bisect`
+will report which commit introduced the property.
+
+To use "old" and "new" instead of "good" and bad, you must run `git
+bisect start` without commits as argument and then run the following
+commands to add the commits:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect old [<rev>]
+------------------------------------------------
+
+to indicate that a commit was before the sought change, or
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect new [<rev>...]
+------------------------------------------------
+
+to indicate that it was after.
+
+To get a reminder of the currently used terms, use
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect terms
+------------------------------------------------
+
+You can get just the old (respectively new) term with `git bisect term
+--term-old` or `git bisect term --term-good`.
+
+If you would like to use your own terms instead of "bad"/"good" or
+"new"/"old", you can choose any names you like (except existing bisect
+subcommands like `reset`, `start`, ...) by starting the
+bisection using
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect start --term-old <term-old> --term-new <term-new>
+------------------------------------------------
+
+For example, if you are looking for a commit that introduced a
+performance regression, you might use
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect start --term-old fast --term-new slow
+------------------------------------------------
+
+Or if you are looking for the commit that fixed a bug, you might use
+
+------------------------------------------------
+git bisect start --term-new fixed --term-old broken
+------------------------------------------------
+
+Then, use `git bisect <term-old>` and `git bisect <term-new>` instead
+of `git bisect good` and `git bisect bad` to mark commits.
+
Bisect visualize
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
`view` may also be used as a synonym for `visualize`.
-If the 'DISPLAY' environment variable is not set, 'git log' is used
+If the `DISPLAY` environment variable is not set, 'git log' is used
instead. You can also give command-line options such as `-p` and
`--stat`.
--no-checkout::
+
Do not checkout the new working tree at each iteration of the bisection
-process. Instead just update a special reference named 'BISECT_HEAD' to make
+process. Instead just update a special reference named `BISECT_HEAD` to make
it point to the commit that should be tested.
+
This option may be useful when the test you would perform in each step
has at least one parent whose reachable graph is fully traversable in the sense
required by 'git pack objects'.
+* Look for a fix instead of a regression in the code
++
+------------
+$ git bisect start
+$ git bisect new HEAD # current commit is marked as new
+$ git bisect old HEAD~10 # the tenth commit from now is marked as old
+------------
++
+or:
+------------
+$ git bisect start --term-old broken --term-new fixed
+$ git bisect fixed
+$ git bisect broken HEAD~10
+------------
+
Getting help
~~~~~~~~~~~~