Re: GIT bisection range errors

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 9 May 2008, Rene Herman wrote:
> 
> I'm in a git bisect and am experiencing strangeness. I did a
> 
> $ git checkout -b rc v2.6.26-rc1
> $ git bisect start
> $ git bisect bad
> $ git bisect good v2.6.25
> 
> Yet, during this I'm finding myself at 2.6.25-rc6 and 2.6.25-rc8
> as the last two results (both good...).

This is very normal.

Why?

Because a lot (in fact, *most*) of the code that was merged after v2.6.25 
was released was actually *written* and committed long before v2.6.25.

It just got merged into my tree much later.

So what happens? The bisection run starts walking into all that history, 
and that history is *not* based on the released v2.6.25 at all, it's based 
on much earlier kernels (eg the -rc kernels).

So what you see is perfectly normal and expected. It's only unexpected if 
you think of history as a linear thing, but it isn't - it's full of 
merging of code that was branched off from (much) earlier code points.

		Linus