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| </head> |
| <body class="article"> |
| <div id="header"> |
| <h1>Fighting regressions with git bisect</h1> |
| <div class="details"> |
| <span id="author" class="author">Christian Couder</span><br/> |
| <span id="email" class="email"><a href="mailto:chriscool@tuxfamily.org">chriscool@tuxfamily.org</a></span><br/> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div id="content"> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_abstract">Abstract</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>"git bisect" enables software users and developers to easily find the |
| commit that introduced a regression. We show why it is important to |
| have good tools to fight regressions. We describe how "git bisect" |
| works from the outside and the algorithms it uses inside. Then we |
| explain how to take advantage of "git bisect" to improve current |
| practices. And we discuss how "git bisect" could improve in the |
| future.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_introduction_to_git_bisect">Introduction to "git bisect"</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Git is a Distributed Version Control system (DVCS) created by Linus |
| Torvalds and maintained by Junio Hamano.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In Git like in many other Version Control Systems (VCS), the different |
| states of the data that is managed by the system are called |
| commits. And, as VCS are mostly used to manage software source code, |
| sometimes "interesting" changes of behavior in the software are |
| introduced in some commits.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In fact people are specially interested in commits that introduce a |
| "bad" behavior, called a bug or a regression. They are interested in |
| these commits because a commit (hopefully) contains a very small set |
| of source code changes. And it’s much easier to understand and |
| properly fix a problem when you only need to check a very small set of |
| changes, than when you don’t know where look in the first place.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So to help people find commits that introduce a "bad" behavior, the |
| "git bisect" set of commands was invented. And it follows of course |
| that in "git bisect" parlance, commits where the "interesting |
| behavior" is present are called "bad" commits, while other commits are |
| called "good" commits. And a commit that introduce the behavior we are |
| interested in is called a "first bad commit". Note that there could be |
| more than one "first bad commit" in the commit space we are searching.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So "git bisect" is designed to help find a "first bad commit". And to |
| be as efficient as possible, it tries to perform a binary search.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_fighting_regressions_overview">Fighting regressions overview</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_regressions_a_big_problem">Regressions: a big problem</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Regressions are a big problem in the software industry. But it’s |
| difficult to put some real numbers behind that claim.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>There are some numbers about bugs in general, like a NIST study in |
| 2002 <a href="#1">[1]</a> that said:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that |
| they cost the U.S. economy an estimated $59.5 billion annually, or |
| about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product, according to a newly |
| released study commissioned by the Department of Commerce’s National |
| Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At the national level, |
| over half of the costs are borne by software users and the remainder |
| by software developers/vendors. The study also found that, although |
| all errors cannot be removed, more than a third of these costs, or an |
| estimated $22.2 billion, could be eliminated by an improved testing |
| infrastructure that enables earlier and more effective identification |
| and removal of software defects. These are the savings associated with |
| finding an increased percentage (but not 100 percent) of errors closer |
| to the development stages in which they are introduced. Currently, |
| over half of all errors are not found until "downstream" in the |
| development process or during post-sale software use.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And then:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Software developers already spend approximately 80 percent of |
| development costs on identifying and correcting defects, and yet few |
| products of any type other than software are shipped with such high |
| levels of errors.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Eventually the conclusion started with:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The path to higher software quality is significantly improved software |
| testing.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>There are other estimates saying that 80% of the cost related to |
| software is about maintenance <a href="#2">[2]</a>.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Though, according to Wikipedia <a href="#3">[3]</a>:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>A common perception of maintenance is that it is merely fixing |
| bugs. However, studies and surveys over the years have indicated that |
| the majority, over 80%, of the maintenance effort is used for |
| non-corrective actions (Pigosky 1997). This perception is perpetuated |
| by users submitting problem reports that in reality are functionality |
| enhancements to the system.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But we can guess that improving on existing software is very costly |
| because you have to watch out for regressions. At least this would |
| make the above studies consistent among themselves.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Of course some kind of software is developed, then used during some |
| time without being improved on much, and then finally thrown away. In |
| this case, of course, regressions may not be a big problem. But on the |
| other hand, there is a lot of big software that is continually |
| developed and maintained during years or even tens of years by a lot |
| of people. And as there are often many people who depend (sometimes |
| critically) on such software, regressions are a really big problem.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>One such software is the Linux kernel. And if we look at the Linux |
| kernel, we can see that a lot of time and effort is spent to fight |
| regressions. The release cycle start with a 2 weeks long merge |
| window. Then the first release candidate (rc) version is tagged. And |
| after that about 7 or 8 more rc versions will appear with around one |
| week between each of them, before the final release.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The time between the first rc release and the final release is |
| supposed to be used to test rc versions and fight bugs and especially |
| regressions. And this time is more than 80% of the release cycle |
| time. But this is not the end of the fight yet, as of course it |
| continues after the release.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And then this is what Ingo Molnar (a well known Linux kernel |
| developer) says about his use of git bisect:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>I most actively use it during the merge window (when a lot of trees |
| get merged upstream and when the influx of bugs is the highest) - and |
| yes, there have been cases that i used it multiple times a day. My |
| average is roughly once a day.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So regressions are fought all the time by developers, and indeed it is |
| well known that bugs should be fixed as soon as possible, so as soon |
| as they are found. That’s why it is interesting to have good tools for |
| this purpose.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_other_tools_to_fight_regressions">Other tools to fight regressions</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So what are the tools used to fight regressions? They are nearly the |
| same as those used to fight regular bugs. The only specific tools are |
| test suites and tools similar as "git bisect".</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Test suites are very nice. But when they are used alone, they are |
| supposed to be used so that all the tests are checked after each |
| commit. This means that they are not very efficient, because many |
| tests are run for no interesting result, and they suffer from |
| combinatorial explosion.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In fact the problem is that big software often has many different |
| configuration options and that each test case should pass for each |
| configuration after each commit. So if you have for each release: N |
| configurations, M commits and T test cases, you should perform:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>N * M * T tests</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where N, M and T are all growing with the size your software.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So very soon it will not be possible to completely test everything.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And if some bugs slip through your test suite, then you can add a test |
| to your test suite. But if you want to use your new improved test |
| suite to find where the bug slipped in, then you will either have to |
| emulate a bisection process or you will perhaps bluntly test each |
| commit backward starting from the "bad" commit you have which may be |
| very wasteful.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_git_bisect_overview">"git bisect" overview</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_starting_a_bisection">Starting a bisection</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The first "git bisect" subcommand to use is "git bisect start" to |
| start the search. Then bounds must be set to limit the commit |
| space. This is done usually by giving one "bad" and at least one |
| "good" commit. They can be passed in the initial call to "git bisect |
| start" like this:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start [BAD [GOOD...]]</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>or they can be set using:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect bad [COMMIT]</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>and:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect good [COMMIT...]</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where BAD, GOOD and COMMIT are all names that can be resolved to a |
| commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Then "git bisect" will checkout a commit of its choosing and ask the |
| user to test it, like this:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start v2.6.27 v2.6.25 |
| Bisecting: 10928 revisions left to test after this (roughly 14 steps) |
| [2ec65f8b89ea003c27ff7723525a2ee335a2b393] x86: clean up using max_low_pfn on 32-bit</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Note that the example that we will use is really a toy example, we |
| will be looking for the first commit that has a version like |
| "2.6.26-something", that is the commit that has a "SUBLEVEL = 26" line |
| in the top level Makefile. This is a toy example because there are |
| better ways to find this commit with Git than using "git bisect" (for |
| example "git blame" or "git log -S<string>").</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_driving_a_bisection_manually">Driving a bisection manually</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>At this point there are basically 2 ways to drive the search. It can |
| be driven manually by the user or it can be driven automatically by a |
| script or a command.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If the user is driving it, then at each step of the search, the user |
| will have to test the current commit and say if it is "good" or "bad" |
| using the "git bisect good" or "git bisect bad" commands respectively |
| that have been described above. For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect bad |
| Bisecting: 5480 revisions left to test after this (roughly 13 steps) |
| [66c0b394f08fd89236515c1c84485ea712a157be] KVM: kill file->f_count abuse in kvm</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And after a few more steps like that, "git bisect" will eventually |
| find a first bad commit:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect bad |
| 2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d is the first bad commit |
| commit 2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d |
| Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
| Date: Sat May 3 11:59:44 2008 -0700 |
| |
| Linux 2.6.26-rc1 |
| |
| :100644 100644 5cf82581... 4492984e... M Makefile</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>At this point we can see what the commit does, check it out (if it’s |
| not already checked out) or tinker with it, for example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git show HEAD |
| commit 2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d |
| Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
| Date: Sat May 3 11:59:44 2008 -0700 |
| |
| Linux 2.6.26-rc1 |
| |
| diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile |
| index 5cf8258..4492984 100644 |
| --- a/Makefile |
| +++ b/Makefile |
| @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ |
| VERSION = 2 |
| PATCHLEVEL = 6 |
| -SUBLEVEL = 25 |
| -EXTRAVERSION = |
| +SUBLEVEL = 26 |
| +EXTRAVERSION = -rc1 |
| NAME = Funky Weasel is Jiggy wit it |
| |
| # *DOCUMENTATION*</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And when we are finished we can use "git bisect reset" to go back to |
| the branch we were in before we started bisecting:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect reset |
| Checking out files: 100% (21549/21549), done. |
| Previous HEAD position was 2ddcca3... Linux 2.6.26-rc1 |
| Switched to branch 'master'</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_driving_a_bisection_automatically">Driving a bisection automatically</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The other way to drive the bisection process is to tell "git bisect" |
| to launch a script or command at each bisection step to know if the |
| current commit is "good" or "bad". To do that, we use the "git bisect |
| run" command. For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start v2.6.27 v2.6.25 |
| Bisecting: 10928 revisions left to test after this (roughly 14 steps) |
| [2ec65f8b89ea003c27ff7723525a2ee335a2b393] x86: clean up using max_low_pfn on 32-bit |
| $ |
| $ git bisect run grep '^SUBLEVEL = 25' Makefile |
| running grep ^SUBLEVEL = 25 Makefile |
| Bisecting: 5480 revisions left to test after this (roughly 13 steps) |
| [66c0b394f08fd89236515c1c84485ea712a157be] KVM: kill file->f_count abuse in kvm |
| running grep ^SUBLEVEL = 25 Makefile |
| SUBLEVEL = 25 |
| Bisecting: 2740 revisions left to test after this (roughly 12 steps) |
| [671294719628f1671faefd4882764886f8ad08cb] V4L/DVB(7879): Adding cx18 Support for mxl5005s |
| ... |
| ... |
| running grep ^SUBLEVEL = 25 Makefile |
| Bisecting: 0 revisions left to test after this (roughly 0 steps) |
| [2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d] Linux 2.6.26-rc1 |
| running grep ^SUBLEVEL = 25 Makefile |
| 2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d is the first bad commit |
| commit 2ddcca36c8bcfa251724fe342c8327451988be0d |
| Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> |
| Date: Sat May 3 11:59:44 2008 -0700 |
| |
| Linux 2.6.26-rc1 |
| |
| :100644 100644 5cf82581... 4492984e... M Makefile |
| bisect run success</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In this example, we passed "grep <em>^SUBLEVEL = 25</em> Makefile" as |
| parameter to "git bisect run". This means that at each step, the grep |
| command we passed will be launched. And if it exits with code 0 (that |
| means success) then git bisect will mark the current state as |
| "good". If it exits with code 1 (or any code between 1 and 127 |
| included, except the special code 125), then the current state will be |
| marked as "bad".</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Exit code between 128 and 255 are special to "git bisect run". They |
| make it stop immediately the bisection process. This is useful for |
| example if the command passed takes too long to complete, because you |
| can kill it with a signal and it will stop the bisection process.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>It can also be useful in scripts passed to "git bisect run" to "exit |
| 255" if some very abnormal situation is detected.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_avoiding_untestable_commits">Avoiding untestable commits</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Sometimes it happens that the current state cannot be tested, for |
| example if it does not compile because there was a bug preventing it |
| at that time. This is what the special exit code 125 is for. It tells |
| "git bisect run" that the current commit should be marked as |
| untestable and that another one should be chosen and checked out.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If the bisection process is driven manually, you can use "git bisect |
| skip" to do the same thing. (In fact the special exit code 125 makes |
| "git bisect run" use "git bisect skip" in the background.)</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Or if you want more control, you can inspect the current state using |
| for example "git bisect visualize". It will launch gitk (or "git log" |
| if the <code>DISPLAY</code> environment variable is not set) to help you find a |
| better bisection point.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Either way, if you have a string of untestable commits, it might |
| happen that the regression you are looking for has been introduced by |
| one of these untestable commits. In this case it’s not possible to |
| tell for sure which commit introduced the regression.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So if you used "git bisect skip" (or the run script exited with |
| special code 125) you could get a result like this:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>There are only 'skip'ped commits left to test. |
| The first bad commit could be any of: |
| 15722f2fa328eaba97022898a305ffc8172db6b1 |
| 78e86cf3e850bd755bb71831f42e200626fbd1e0 |
| e15b73ad3db9b48d7d1ade32f8cd23a751fe0ace |
| 070eab2303024706f2924822bfec8b9847e4ac1b |
| We cannot bisect more!</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_saving_a_log_and_replaying_it">Saving a log and replaying it</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If you want to show other people your bisection process, you can get a |
| log using for example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect log > bisect_log.txt</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And it is possible to replay it using:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect replay bisect_log.txt</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_git_bisect_details">"git bisect" details</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_bisection_algorithm">Bisection algorithm</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>As the Git commits form a directed acyclic graph (DAG), finding the |
| best bisection commit to test at each step is not so simple. Anyway |
| Linus found and implemented a "truly stupid" algorithm, later improved |
| by Junio Hamano, that works quite well.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So the algorithm used by "git bisect" to find the best bisection |
| commit when there are no skipped commits is the following:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>1) keep only the commits that:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>a) are ancestor of the "bad" commit (including the "bad" commit itself), |
| b) are not ancestor of a "good" commit (excluding the "good" commits).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This means that we get rid of the uninteresting commits in the DAG.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example if we start with a graph like this:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>G-Y-G-W-W-W-X-X-X-X |
| \ / |
| W-W-B |
| / |
| Y---G-W---W |
| \ / \ |
| Y-Y X-X-X-X |
| |
| -> time goes this way -></pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where B is the "bad" commit, "G" are "good" commits and W, X, and Y |
| are other commits, we will get the following graph after this first |
| step:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>W-W-W |
| \ |
| W-W-B |
| / |
| W---W</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So only the W and B commits will be kept. Because commits X and Y will |
| have been removed by rules a) and b) respectively, and because commits |
| G are removed by rule b) too.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Note for Git users, that it is equivalent as keeping only the commit |
| given by:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>git rev-list BAD --not GOOD1 GOOD2...</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Also note that we don’t require the commits that are kept to be |
| descendants of a "good" commit. So in the following example, commits W |
| and Z will be kept:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>G-W-W-W-B |
| / |
| Z-Z</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>2) starting from the "good" ends of the graph, associate to each |
| commit the number of ancestors it has plus one</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example with the following graph where H is the "bad" commit and A |
| and D are some parents of some "good" commits:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>A-B-C |
| \ |
| F-G-H |
| / |
| D---E</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>this will give:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>1 2 3 |
| A-B-C |
| \6 7 8 |
| F-G-H |
| 1 2/ |
| D---E</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>3) associate to each commit: min(X, N - X)</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where X is the value associated to the commit in step 2) and N is the |
| total number of commits in the graph.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In the above example we have N = 8, so this will give:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>1 2 3 |
| A-B-C |
| \2 1 0 |
| F-G-H |
| 1 2/ |
| D---E</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>4) the best bisection point is the commit with the highest associated |
| number</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So in the above example the best bisection point is commit C.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>5) note that some shortcuts are implemented to speed up the algorithm</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>As we know N from the beginning, we know that min(X, N - X) can’t be |
| greater than N/2. So during steps 2) and 3), if we would associate N/2 |
| to a commit, then we know this is the best bisection point. So in this |
| case we can just stop processing any other commit and return the |
| current commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_bisection_algorithm_debugging">Bisection algorithm debugging</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For any commit graph, you can see the number associated with each |
| commit using "git rev-list --bisect-all".</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example, for the above graph, a command like:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git rev-list --bisect-all BAD --not GOOD1 GOOD2</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>would output something like:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>e15b73ad3db9b48d7d1ade32f8cd23a751fe0ace (dist=3) |
| 15722f2fa328eaba97022898a305ffc8172db6b1 (dist=2) |
| 78e86cf3e850bd755bb71831f42e200626fbd1e0 (dist=2) |
| a1939d9a142de972094af4dde9a544e577ddef0e (dist=2) |
| 070eab2303024706f2924822bfec8b9847e4ac1b (dist=1) |
| a3864d4f32a3bf5ed177ddef598490a08760b70d (dist=1) |
| a41baa717dd74f1180abf55e9341bc7a0bb9d556 (dist=1) |
| 9e622a6dad403b71c40979743bb9d5be17b16bd6 (dist=0)</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_bisection_algorithm_discussed">Bisection algorithm discussed</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>First let’s define "best bisection point". We will say that a commit X |
| is a best bisection point or a best bisection commit if knowing its |
| state ("good" or "bad") gives as much information as possible whether |
| the state of the commit happens to be "good" or "bad".</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This means that the best bisection commits are the commits where the |
| following function is maximum:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>f(X) = min(information_if_good(X), information_if_bad(X))</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where information_if_good(X) is the information we get if X is good |
| and information_if_bad(X) is the information we get if X is bad.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Now we will suppose that there is only one "first bad commit". This |
| means that all its descendants are "bad" and all the other commits are |
| "good". And we will suppose that all commits have an equal probability |
| of being good or bad, or of being the first bad commit, so knowing the |
| state of c commits gives always the same amount of information |
| wherever these c commits are on the graph and whatever c is. (So we |
| suppose that these commits being for example on a branch or near a |
| good or a bad commit does not give more or less information).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Let’s also suppose that we have a cleaned up graph like one after step |
| 1) in the bisection algorithm above. This means that we can measure |
| the information we get in terms of number of commit we can remove |
| from the graph..</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And let’s take a commit X in the graph.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If X is found to be "good", then we know that its ancestors are all |
| "good", so we want to say that:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>information_if_good(X) = number_of_ancestors(X) (TRUE)</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And this is true because at step 1) b) we remove the ancestors of the |
| "good" commits.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If X is found to be "bad", then we know that its descendants are all |
| "bad", so we want to say that:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>information_if_bad(X) = number_of_descendants(X) (WRONG)</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But this is wrong because at step 1) a) we keep only the ancestors of |
| the bad commit. So we get more information when a commit is marked as |
| "bad", because we also know that the ancestors of the previous "bad" |
| commit that are not ancestors of the new "bad" commit are not the |
| first bad commit. We don’t know if they are good or bad, but we know |
| that they are not the first bad commit because they are not ancestor |
| of the new "bad" commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So when a commit is marked as "bad" we know we can remove all the |
| commits in the graph except those that are ancestors of the new "bad" |
| commit. This means that:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>information_if_bad(X) = N - number_of_ancestors(X) (TRUE)</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where N is the number of commits in the (cleaned up) graph.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So in the end this means that to find the best bisection commits we |
| should maximize the function:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>f(X) = min(number_of_ancestors(X), N - number_of_ancestors(X))</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And this is nice because at step 2) we compute number_of_ancestors(X) |
| and so at step 3) we compute f(X).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Let’s take the following graph as an example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre> G-H-I-J |
| / \ |
| A-B-C-D-E-F O |
| \ / |
| K-L-M-N</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If we compute the following non optimal function on it:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>g(X) = min(number_of_ancestors(X), number_of_descendants(X))</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>we get:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre> 4 3 2 1 |
| G-H-I-J |
| 1 2 3 4 5 6/ \0 |
| A-B-C-D-E-F O |
| \ / |
| K-L-M-N |
| 4 3 2 1</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>but with the algorithm used by git bisect we get:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre> 7 7 6 5 |
| G-H-I-J |
| 1 2 3 4 5 6/ \0 |
| A-B-C-D-E-F O |
| \ / |
| K-L-M-N |
| 7 7 6 5</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So we chose G, H, K or L as the best bisection point, which is better |
| than F. Because if for example L is bad, then we will know not only |
| that L, M and N are bad but also that G, H, I and J are not the first |
| bad commit (since we suppose that there is only one first bad commit |
| and it must be an ancestor of L).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So the current algorithm seems to be the best possible given what we |
| initially supposed.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_skip_algorithm">Skip algorithm</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>When some commits have been skipped (using "git bisect skip"), then |
| the bisection algorithm is the same for step 1) to 3). But then we use |
| roughly the following steps:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>6) sort the commit by decreasing associated value</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>7) if the first commit has not been skipped, we can return it and stop |
| here</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>8) otherwise filter out all the skipped commits in the sorted list</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>9) use a pseudo random number generator (PRNG) to generate a random |
| number between 0 and 1</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>10) multiply this random number with its square root to bias it toward |
| 0</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>11) multiply the result by the number of commits in the filtered list |
| to get an index into this list</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>12) return the commit at the computed index</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_skip_algorithm_discussed">Skip algorithm discussed</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>After step 7) (in the skip algorithm), we could check if the second |
| commit has been skipped and return it if it is not the case. And in |
| fact that was the algorithm we used from when "git bisect skip" was |
| developed in Git version 1.5.4 (released on February 1st 2008) until |
| Git version 1.6.4 (released July 29th 2009).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But Ingo Molnar and H. Peter Anvin (another well known linux kernel |
| developer) both complained that sometimes the best bisection points |
| all happened to be in an area where all the commits are |
| untestable. And in this case the user was asked to test many |
| untestable commits, which could be very inefficient.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Indeed untestable commits are often untestable because a breakage was |
| introduced at one time, and that breakage was fixed only after many |
| other commits were introduced.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This breakage is of course most of the time unrelated to the breakage |
| we are trying to locate in the commit graph. But it prevents us to |
| know if the interesting "bad behavior" is present or not.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So it is a fact that commits near an untestable commit have a high |
| probability of being untestable themselves. And the best bisection |
| commits are often found together too (due to the bisection algorithm).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This is why it is a bad idea to just chose the next best unskipped |
| bisection commit when the first one has been skipped.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>We found that most commits on the graph may give quite a lot of |
| information when they are tested. And the commits that will not on |
| average give a lot of information are the one near the good and bad |
| commits.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So using a PRNG with a bias to favor commits away from the good and |
| bad commits looked like a good choice.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>One obvious improvement to this algorithm would be to look for a |
| commit that has an associated value near the one of the best bisection |
| commit, and that is on another branch, before using the PRNG. Because |
| if such a commit exists, then it is not very likely to be untestable |
| too, so it will probably give more information than a nearly randomly |
| chosen one.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_checking_merge_bases">Checking merge bases</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>There is another tweak in the bisection algorithm that has not been |
| described in the "bisection algorithm" above.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>We supposed in the previous examples that the "good" commits were |
| ancestors of the "bad" commit. But this is not a requirement of "git |
| bisect".</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Of course the "bad" commit cannot be an ancestor of a "good" commit, |
| because the ancestors of the good commits are supposed to be |
| "good". And all the "good" commits must be related to the bad commit. |
| They cannot be on a branch that has no link with the branch of the |
| "bad" commit. But it is possible for a good commit to be related to a |
| bad commit and yet not be neither one of its ancestor nor one of its |
| descendants.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example, there can be a "main" branch, and a "dev" branch that was |
| forked of the main branch at a commit named "D" like this:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>A-B-C-D-E-F-G <--main |
| \ |
| H-I-J <--dev</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The commit "D" is called a "merge base" for branch "main" and "dev" |
| because it’s the best common ancestor for these branches for a merge.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Now let’s suppose that commit J is bad and commit G is good and that |
| we apply the bisection algorithm like it has been previously |
| described.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>As described in step 1) b) of the bisection algorithm, we remove all |
| the ancestors of the good commits because they are supposed to be good |
| too.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So we would be left with only:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>H-I-J</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But what happens if the first bad commit is "B" and if it has been |
| fixed in the "main" branch by commit "F"?</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The result of such a bisection would be that we would find that H is |
| the first bad commit, when in fact it’s B. So that would be wrong!</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And yes it can happen in practice that people working on one branch |
| are not aware that people working on another branch fixed a bug! It |
| could also happen that F fixed more than one bug or that it is a |
| revert of some big development effort that was not ready to be |
| released.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In fact development teams often maintain both a development branch and |
| a maintenance branch, and it would be quite easy for them if "git |
| bisect" just worked when they want to bisect a regression on the |
| development branch that is not on the maintenance branch. They should |
| be able to start bisecting using:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start dev main</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>To enable that additional nice feature, when a bisection is started |
| and when some good commits are not ancestors of the bad commit, we |
| first compute the merge bases between the bad and the good commits and |
| we chose these merge bases as the first commits that will be checked |
| out and tested.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If it happens that one merge base is bad, then the bisection process |
| is stopped with a message like:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>The merge base BBBBBB is bad. |
| This means the bug has been fixed between BBBBBB and [GGGGGG,...].</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where BBBBBB is the sha1 hash of the bad merge base and [GGGGGG,…​] |
| is a comma separated list of the sha1 of the good commits.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If some of the merge bases are skipped, then the bisection process |
| continues, but the following message is printed for each skipped merge |
| base:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>Warning: the merge base between BBBBBB and [GGGGGG,...] must be skipped. |
| So we cannot be sure the first bad commit is between MMMMMM and BBBBBB. |
| We continue anyway.</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where BBBBBB is the sha1 hash of the bad commit, MMMMMM is the sha1 |
| hash of the merge base that is skipped and [GGGGGG,…​] is a comma |
| separated list of the sha1 of the good commits.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So if there is no bad merge base, the bisection process continues as |
| usual after this step.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_best_bisecting_practices">Best bisecting practices</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_using_test_suites_and_git_bisect_together">Using test suites and git bisect together</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If you both have a test suite and use git bisect, then it becomes less |
| important to check that all tests pass after each commit. Though of |
| course it is probably a good idea to have some checks to avoid |
| breaking too many things because it could make bisecting other bugs |
| more difficult.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>You can focus your efforts to check at a few points (for example rc |
| and beta releases) that all the T test cases pass for all the N |
| configurations. And when some tests don’t pass you can use "git |
| bisect" (or better "git bisect run"). So you should perform roughly:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>c * N * T + b * M * log2(M) tests</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where c is the number of rounds of test (so a small constant) and b is |
| the ratio of bug per commit (hopefully a small constant too).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So of course it’s much better as it’s O(N * T) vs O(N * T * M) if |
| you would test everything after each commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This means that test suites are good to prevent some bugs from being |
| committed and they are also quite good to tell you that you have some |
| bugs. But they are not so good to tell you where some bugs have been |
| introduced. To tell you that efficiently, git bisect is needed.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The other nice thing with test suites, is that when you have one, you |
| already know how to test for bad behavior. So you can use this |
| knowledge to create a new test case for "git bisect" when it appears |
| that there is a regression. So it will be easier to bisect the bug and |
| fix it. And then you can add the test case you just created to your |
| test suite.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So if you know how to create test cases and how to bisect, you will be |
| subject to a virtuous circle:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>more tests ⇒ easier to create tests ⇒ easier to bisect ⇒ more tests</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So test suites and "git bisect" are complementary tools that are very |
| powerful and efficient when used together.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_bisecting_build_failures">Bisecting build failures</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>You can very easily automatically bisect broken builds using something |
| like:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start BAD GOOD |
| $ git bisect run make</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_passing_sh_c_some_commands_to_git_bisect_run">Passing sh -c "some commands" to "git bisect run"</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect run sh -c "make || exit 125; ./my_app | grep 'good output'"</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>On the other hand if you do this often, then it can be worth having |
| scripts to avoid too much typing.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_finding_performance_regressions">Finding performance regressions</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Here is an example script that comes slightly modified from a real |
| world script used by Junio Hamano <a href="#4">[4]</a>.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This script can be passed to "git bisect run" to find the commit that |
| introduced a performance regression:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>#!/bin/sh |
| |
| # Build errors are not what I am interested in. |
| make my_app || exit 255 |
| |
| # We are checking if it stops in a reasonable amount of time, so |
| # let it run in the background... |
| |
| ./my_app >log 2>&1 & |
| |
| # ... and grab its process ID. |
| pid=$! |
| |
| # ... and then wait for sufficiently long. |
| sleep $NORMAL_TIME |
| |
| # ... and then see if the process is still there. |
| if kill -0 $pid |
| then |
| # It is still running -- that is bad. |
| kill $pid; sleep 1; kill $pid; |
| exit 1 |
| else |
| # It has already finished (the $pid process was no more), |
| # and we are happy. |
| exit 0 |
| fi</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_following_general_best_practices">Following general best practices</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>It is obviously a good idea not to have commits with changes that |
| knowingly break things, even if some other commits later fix the |
| breakage.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>It is also a good idea when using any VCS to have only one small |
| logical change in each commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The smaller the changes in your commit, the most effective "git |
| bisect" will be. And you will probably need "git bisect" less in the |
| first place, as small changes are easier to review even if they are |
| only reviewed by the committer.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Another good idea is to have good commit messages. They can be very |
| helpful to understand why some changes were made.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>These general best practices are very helpful if you bisect often.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_avoiding_bug_prone_merges">Avoiding bug prone merges</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>First merges by themselves can introduce some regressions even when |
| the merge needs no source code conflict resolution. This is because a |
| semantic change can happen in one branch while the other branch is not |
| aware of it.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example one branch can change the semantic of a function while the |
| other branch add more calls to the same function.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This is made much worse if many files have to be fixed to resolve |
| conflicts. That’s why such merges are called "evil merges". They can |
| make regressions very difficult to track down. It can even be |
| misleading to know the first bad commit if it happens to be such a |
| merge, because people might think that the bug comes from bad conflict |
| resolution when it comes from a semantic change in one branch.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Anyway "git rebase" can be used to linearize history. This can be used |
| either to avoid merging in the first place. Or it can be used to |
| bisect on a linear history instead of the non linear one, as this |
| should give more information in case of a semantic change in one |
| branch.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Merges can be also made simpler by using smaller branches or by using |
| many topic branches instead of only long version related branches.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And testing can be done more often in special integration branches |
| like linux-next for the linux kernel.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_adapting_your_work_flow">Adapting your work-flow</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>A special work-flow to process regressions can give great results.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Here is an example of a work-flow used by Andreas Ericsson:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="ulist"> |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <p>write, in the test suite, a test script that exposes the regression</p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>use "git bisect run" to find the commit that introduced it</p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>fix the bug that is often made obvious by the previous step</p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>commit both the fix and the test script (and if needed more tests)</p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And here is what Andreas said about this work-flow <a href="#5">[5]</a>:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>To give some hard figures, we used to have an average report-to-fix |
| cycle of 142.6 hours (according to our somewhat weird bug-tracker |
| which just measures wall-clock time). Since we moved to Git, we’ve |
| lowered that to 16.2 hours. Primarily because we can stay on top of |
| the bug fixing now, and because everyone’s jockeying to get to fix |
| bugs (we’re quite proud of how lazy we are to let Git find the bugs |
| for us). Each new release results in ~40% fewer bugs (almost certainly |
| due to how we now feel about writing tests).</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Clearly this work-flow uses the virtuous circle between test suites |
| and "git bisect". In fact it makes it the standard procedure to deal |
| with regression.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In other messages Andreas says that they also use the "best practices" |
| described above: small logical commits, topic branches, no evil |
| merge,…​ These practices all improve the bisectability of the commit |
| graph, by making it easier and more useful to bisect.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So a good work-flow should be designed around the above points. That |
| is making bisecting easier, more useful and standard.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_involving_qa_people_and_if_possible_end_users">Involving QA people and if possible end users</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>One nice about "git bisect" is that it is not only a developer |
| tool. It can effectively be used by QA people or even end users (if |
| they have access to the source code or if they can get access to all |
| the builds).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>There was a discussion at one point on the linux kernel mailing list |
| of whether it was ok to always ask end user to bisect, and very good |
| points were made to support the point of view that it is ok.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example David Miller wrote <a href="#6">[6]</a>:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>What people don’t get is that this is a situation where the "end node |
| principle" applies. When you have limited resources (here: developers) |
| you don’t push the bulk of the burden upon them. Instead you push |
| things out to the resource you have a lot of, the end nodes (here: |
| users), so that the situation actually scales.</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This means that it is often "cheaper" if QA people or end users can do |
| it.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>What is interesting too is that end users that are reporting bugs (or |
| QA people that reproduced a bug) have access to the environment where |
| the bug happens. So they can often more easily reproduce a |
| regression. And if they can bisect, then more information will be |
| extracted from the environment where the bug happens, which means that |
| it will be easier to understand and then fix the bug.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For open source projects it can be a good way to get more useful |
| contributions from end users, and to introduce them to QA and |
| development activities.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_using_complex_scripts">Using complex scripts</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In some cases like for kernel development it can be worth developing |
| complex scripts to be able to fully automate bisecting.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Here is what Ingo Molnar says about that <a href="#7">[7]</a>:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>i have a fully automated bootup-hang bisection script. It is based on |
| "git-bisect run". I run the script, it builds and boots kernels fully |
| automatically, and when the bootup fails (the script notices that via |
| the serial log, which it continuously watches - or via a timeout, if |
| the system does not come up within 10 minutes it’s a "bad" kernel), |
| the script raises my attention via a beep and i power cycle the test |
| box. (yeah, i should make use of a managed power outlet to 100% |
| automate it)</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_combining_test_suites_git_bisect_and_other_systems_together">Combining test suites, git bisect and other systems together</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>We have seen that test suites and git bisect are very powerful when |
| used together. It can be even more powerful if you can combine them |
| with other systems.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example some test suites could be run automatically at night with |
| some unusual (or even random) configurations. And if a regression is |
| found by a test suite, then "git bisect" can be automatically |
| launched, and its result can be emailed to the author of the first bad |
| commit found by "git bisect", and perhaps other people too. And a new |
| entry in the bug tracking system could be automatically created too.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_the_future_of_bisecting">The future of bisecting</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_git_replace">"git replace"</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>We saw earlier that "git bisect skip" is now using a PRNG to try to |
| avoid areas in the commit graph where commits are untestable. The |
| problem is that sometimes the first bad commit will be in an |
| untestable area.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>To simplify the discussion we will suppose that the untestable area is |
| a simple string of commits and that it was created by a breakage |
| introduced by one commit (let’s call it BBC for bisect breaking |
| commit) and later fixed by another one (let’s call it BFC for bisect |
| fixing commit).</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>...-Y-BBC-X1-X2-X3-X4-X5-X6-BFC-Z-...</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where we know that Y is good and BFC is bad, and where BBC and X1 to |
| X6 are untestable.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In this case if you are bisecting manually, what you can do is create |
| a special branch that starts just before the BBC. The first commit in |
| this branch should be the BBC with the BFC squashed into it. And the |
| other commits in the branch should be the commits between BBC and BFC |
| rebased on the first commit of the branch and then the commit after |
| BFC also rebased on.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre> (BBC+BFC)-X1'-X2'-X3'-X4'-X5'-X6'-Z' |
| / |
| ...-Y-BBC-X1-X2-X3-X4-X5-X6-BFC-Z-...</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>where commits quoted with ' have been rebased.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>You can easily create such a branch with Git using interactive rebase.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example using:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git rebase -i Y Z</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>and then moving BFC after BBC and squashing it.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>After that you can start bisecting as usual in the new branch and you |
| should eventually find the first bad commit.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>For example:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre>$ git bisect start Z' Y</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>If you are using "git bisect run", you can use the same manual fix up |
| as above, and then start another "git bisect run" in the special |
| branch. Or as the "git bisect" man page says, the script passed to |
| "git bisect run" can apply a patch before it compiles and test the |
| software <a href="#8">[8]</a>. The patch should turn a current untestable commits |
| into a testable one. So the testing will result in "good" or "bad" and |
| "git bisect" will be able to find the first bad commit. And the script |
| should not forget to remove the patch once the testing is done before |
| exiting from the script.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>(Note that instead of a patch you can use "git cherry-pick BFC" to |
| apply the fix, and in this case you should use "git reset --hard |
| HEAD^" to revert the cherry-pick after testing and before returning |
| from the script.)</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But the above ways to work around untestable areas are a little bit |
| clunky. Using special branches is nice because these branches can be |
| shared by developers like usual branches, but the risk is that people |
| will get many such branches. And it disrupts the normal "git bisect" |
| work-flow. So, if you want to use "git bisect run" completely |
| automatically, you have to add special code in your script to restart |
| bisection in the special branches.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Anyway one can notice in the above special branch example that the Z' |
| and Z commits should point to the same source code state (the same |
| "tree" in git parlance). That’s because Z' result from applying the |
| same changes as Z just in a slightly different order.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So if we could just "replace" Z by Z' when we bisect, then we would |
| not need to add anything to a script. It would just work for anyone in |
| the project sharing the special branches and the replacements.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>With the example above that would give:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="listingblock"> |
| <div class="content"> |
| <pre> (BBC+BFC)-X1'-X2'-X3'-X4'-X5'-X6'-Z'-... |
| / |
| ...-Y-BBC-X1-X2-X3-X4-X5-X6-BFC-Z</pre> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>That’s why the "git replace" command was created. Technically it |
| stores replacements "refs" in the "refs/replace/" hierarchy. These |
| "refs" are like branches (that are stored in "refs/heads/") or tags |
| (that are stored in "refs/tags"), and that means that they can |
| automatically be shared like branches or tags among developers.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>"git replace" is a very powerful mechanism. It can be used to fix |
| commits in already released history, for example to change the commit |
| message or the author. And it can also be used instead of git "grafts" |
| to link a repository with another old repository.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In fact it’s this last feature that "sold" it to the Git community, so |
| it is now in the "master" branch of Git’s Git repository and it should |
| be released in Git 1.6.5 in October or November 2009.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>One problem with "git replace" is that currently it stores all the |
| replacements refs in "refs/replace/", but it would be perhaps better |
| if the replacement refs that are useful only for bisecting would be in |
| "refs/replace/bisect/". This way the replacement refs could be used |
| only for bisecting, while other refs directly in "refs/replace/" would |
| be used nearly all the time.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect2"> |
| <h3 id="_bisecting_sporadic_bugs">Bisecting sporadic bugs</h3> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Another possible improvement to "git bisect" would be to optionally |
| add some redundancy to the tests performed so that it would be more |
| reliable when tracking sporadic bugs.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>This has been requested by some kernel developers because some bugs |
| called sporadic bugs do not appear in all the kernel builds because |
| they are very dependent on the compiler output.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>The idea is that every 3 test for example, "git bisect" could ask the |
| user to test a commit that has already been found to be "good" or |
| "bad" (because one of its descendants or one of its ancestors has been |
| found to be "good" or "bad" respectively). If it happens that a commit |
| has been previously incorrectly classified then the bisection can be |
| aborted early, hopefully before too many mistakes have been made. Then |
| the user will have to look at what happened and then restart the |
| bisection using a fixed bisect log.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>There is already a project called BBChop created by Ealdwulf Wuffinga |
| on Github that does something like that using Bayesian Search Theory |
| <a href="#9">[9]</a>:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>BBChop is like <em>git bisect</em> (or equivalent), but works when your bug |
| is intermittent. That is, it works in the presence of false negatives |
| (when a version happens to work this time even though it contains the |
| bug). It assumes that there are no false positives (in principle, the |
| same approach would work, but adding it may be non-trivial).</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>But BBChop is independent of any VCS and it would be easier for Git |
| users to have something integrated in Git.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_conclusion">Conclusion</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>We have seen that regressions are an important problem, and that "git |
| bisect" has nice features that complement very well practices and |
| other tools, especially test suites, that are generally used to fight |
| regressions. But it might be needed to change some work-flows and |
| (bad) habits to get the most out of it.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Some improvements to the algorithms inside "git bisect" are possible |
| and some new features could help in some cases, but overall "git |
| bisect" works already very well, is used a lot, and is already very |
| useful. To back up that last claim, let’s give the final word to Ingo |
| Molnar when he was asked by the author how much time does he think |
| "git bisect" saves him when he uses it:</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="quoteblock"> |
| <blockquote> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>a <em>lot</em>.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>About ten years ago did i do my first <em>bisection</em> of a Linux patch |
| queue. That was prior the Git (and even prior the BitKeeper) days. I |
| literally days spent sorting out patches, creating what in essence |
| were standalone commits that i guessed to be related to that bug.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>It was a tool of absolute last resort. I’d rather spend days looking |
| at printk output than do a manual <em>patch bisection</em>.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>With Git bisect it’s a breeze: in the best case i can get a ~15 step |
| kernel bisection done in 20-30 minutes, in an automated way. Even with |
| manual help or when bisecting multiple, overlapping bugs, it’s rarely |
| more than an hour.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>In fact it’s invaluable because there are bugs i would never even |
| <em>try</em> to debug if it wasn’t for git bisect. In the past there were bug |
| patterns that were immediately hopeless for me to debug - at best i |
| could send the crash/bug signature to lkml and hope that someone else |
| can think of something.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>And even if a bisection fails today it tells us something valuable |
| about the bug: that it’s non-deterministic - timing or kernel image |
| layout dependent.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>So git bisect is unconditional goodness - and feel free to quote that |
| ;-)</p> |
| </div> |
| </blockquote> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_acknowledgments">Acknowledgments</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Many thanks to Junio Hamano for his help in reviewing this paper, for |
| reviewing the patches I sent to the Git mailing list, for discussing |
| some ideas and helping me improve them, for improving "git bisect" a |
| lot and for his awesome work in maintaining and developing Git.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Many thanks to Ingo Molnar for giving me very useful information that |
| appears in this paper, for commenting on this paper, for his |
| suggestions to improve "git bisect" and for evangelizing "git bisect" |
| on the linux kernel mailing lists.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Many thanks to Linus Torvalds for inventing, developing and |
| evangelizing "git bisect", Git and Linux.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Many thanks to the many other great people who helped one way or |
| another when I worked on Git, especially to Andreas Ericsson, Johannes |
| Schindelin, H. Peter Anvin, Daniel Barkalow, Bill Lear, John Hawley, |
| Shawn O. Pierce, Jeff King, Sam Vilain, Jon Seymour.</p> |
| </div> |
| <div class="paragraph"> |
| <p>Many thanks to the Linux-Kongress program committee for choosing the |
| author to given a talk and for publishing this paper.</p> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="sect1"> |
| <h2 id="_references">References</h2> |
| <div class="sectionbody"> |
| <div class="ulist"> |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[1]]] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091206032101/http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-10.htm"><em>Software Errors Cost U.S. Economy $59.5 Billion Annually</em>. Nist News Release.</a> See also <a href="https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/director/planning/report02-3.pdf"><em>The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infratructure for Software Testing</em>. Nist Planning Report 02-3</a>, Executive Summary and Chapter 8.</p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[2]]] <a href="https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/codeconventions-introduction.html"><em>Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language: 1. Introduction</em>. Sun Microsystems.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[3]]] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_maintenance"><em>Software maintenance</em>. Wikipedia.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[4]]] <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/git/7vps5xsbwp.fsf_-_@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net/">Junio C Hamano. <em>Automated bisect success story</em>.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[5]]] <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/317154/">Christian Couder. <em>Fully automated bisecting with "git bisect run"</em>. LWN.net.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[6]]] <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/277872/">Jonathan Corbet. <em>Bisection divides users and developers</em>. LWN.net.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[7]]] <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20071207113734.GA14598@elte.hu/">Ingo Molnar. <em>Re: BUG 2.6.23-rc3 can’t see sd partitions on Alpha</em>. Linux-kernel mailing list.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[8]]] <a href="https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-bisect.html">Junio C Hamano and the git-list. <em>git-bisect(1) Manual Page</em>. Linux Kernel Archives.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <p>[[[9]]] <a href="https://github.com/Ealdwulf/bbchop">Ealdwulf. <em>bbchop</em>. GitHub.</a></p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
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