Re: Messing with the VC history

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Andreas Schwab writes:
 > Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org> writes:
 > 
 > > bisect would be more useful, IMHO, if it followed first-parents by default.
 > 
 > Bisecting follows whatever you tell it about the good/bad state of
 > branches.

No, bisecting has a choice of which of several paths to follow through
a DAG between a branch point and a merge.  Telling it "bisect between
node and merge" doesn't help it make that choice.

I don't know how git chooses, but Barry is saying that in a workflow
where all mainline commits are either merge commits (for multiple-
commit "complex feature" branches) or one-off (for "simple bugfix"
commits), the bisect algorithm should follow the mainline (ie, first
parents) and completely ignore off-mainline "component of feature"
commits.  I suspect that is in fact what git does, but don't have time
to check.