When a bug appears in your project, it is hard to figure out which commit caused it especially if there are hundreds of changes. Manually checking each one is slow and frustrating. Git Bisect solves this by using binary search to quickly find the faulty commit. You just mark one commit where everything worked (good) and one where the bug exists (bad), and Git automatically checks the commits in between to narrow it down saving time and effort.
What does the git bisect command do?
git bisect is a command in Git that helps you find the commit that introduced a bug or caused a regression in your codebase. It uses a binary search algorithm to efficiently narrow down the range of commits that needs to be tested.
By marking specific commits as “good” or “bad”, git bisect automatically selects the next commit for testing until it identifies the exact commit that introduced the issue. This process helps identify the faulty commit more quickly and efficiently, enabling developers to pinpoint and fix the problem more effectively.
Implementation of Git bisect command
Let’s say you have a repository where you found a bug in the code. Here is how you would implement git bisect step by step:
Step 1: Start the bisect process
git bisect start
Step 2: Mark the current commit as bad
Assume HEAD is the bad commit
git bisect bad
Step 3: Identify a known good commit
Replace <good_commit_hash> with the actual hash of the last known good commit
git bisect good <good_commit_hash>
Step 4: Test each commit
- Git will now check out a commit in the middle of the range. Run your tests:
- Run your test command
./run-tests.sh
- If the tests fail (bug is present):
git bisect bad
- If the tests pass (bug is not present):
git bisect good
Step 5: Repeat until you find the offending commit
Git will continue to provide you with commits to test. Follow the previous step until you see a message indicating which commit introduced the bug.
Output:
Conclusion
git bisect is a highly efficient and practical tool to track down bugs in your Git history. By combining automation with binary search logic, it drastically reduces the time needed to identify the commit that introduced an issue making debugging in large projects far more manageable.
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