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Subject: Re: How to get svn-bisect?
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From: Ryan Schmidt <subversion-2011a@ryandesign.com>
In-Reply-To: <4D2C5E45.6040500@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:05:46 -0600
Cc: users@subversion.apache.org
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To: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@gmail.com>

On Jan 11, 2011, at 07:42, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 1/11/11 1:09 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> Subversion does not include a program called "svn-bisect". For those =
of us not familiar with git, perhaps you could explain what git-bisect =
does, then we can tell you if there is equivalent functionality =
available in Subversion.
>>=20
>> Alternately, a Google search shows me others have written tools =
called "svn-bisect" which may do what you want:
>>=20
>> http://www.google.com/search?q=3Dsvn-bisect
>>=20
>=20
> I read a few of the links out of curiosity - this one expains what it =
does and why you would want it:
> http://blogs.atlassian.com/developer/2009/01/git_bisect.html
>=20
> Basically you give it a good and bad revision and a test to run and it =
finds the commit that broke things with a binary search.  Of course if =
you were using something like Hudson doing continuous builds for you, =
you'd already know...

Yup, that's what I figured it would do.

A couple days ago I manually bisected a problem in an open source =
project I've been involved with. There is no test suite, and I supposed =
it would have taken me longer to figure out how to write a test for the =
problem "the entire window is purple" than to just manually build and =
run a few revisions. In the end, the revision I identified unfortunately =
changed at least a dozen things in the code -- including refactoring =
existing code, adding new code, and even whitespace changes (groan) -- =
so that hasn't been totally helpful in tracking down the problem yet. =
Let it be yet another repeat of the lesson to commit the smallest unit =
of work possible. It's not like the repository is going to run out of =
revisions! :)