/ 
App-SVN-Bisect-0.1
River stage zero No dependents
/ svn-bisect

NAME

svn-bisect

SYNOPSIS

$ svn-bisect start --min 25000 --max 26000
$ svn-bisect bad
$ svn-bisect bad
$ svn-bisect good
[etc etc]
$ svn-bisect reset

DESCRIPTION

This tool's purpose is to help you determine which revision of a subversion repository contains a change. It does this by employing a binary search. It will manage the current revision of your checkout directory, and narrow in on the target revision, as you give it clues about the current revision such as "before" (this revision is before the one you want) or "after" (this revision is after the one you want).

Start a bisect session with the "start" command. Then, walk the binary tree by using the "before" and "after" commands. When you are done, the tool will tell you the target revision.

The most common usage scenario is finding out which rev a bug was introduced in. For this purpose, some command aliases have been added: if the current revision contains the bug, you can use the "bad" command (meaning, this revision is "after" the change you want to find), otherwise use the "good" command (meaning, this revision is "before" the change you want to find).

All commands should be run from within a subversion checkout directory. After a "svn-bisect start", all subsequent svn-bisect commands need to be run from that same directory.

SUBCOMMANDS

start

svn-bisect start --min M --max N

Start a new bisect session. If --min isn't specified, rev 0 is used. If --max isn't specified, the biggest rev in the repository is used.

after

svn-bisect after
or: svn-bisect bad

Inform svn-bisect that the current revision is *after* the change we're looking for. If you are looking for the rev which introduced a bug, the alias "bad" might be easier to remember.

before

svn-bisect before
or: svn-bisect good

Inform svn-bisect that the current revision is *before* the change we're looking for. If you are looking for the rev which introduced a bug, the alias "good" might be easier to remember.

skip

svn-bisect skip

Tell svn-bisect to skip the current revision. Do this if you can't determine whether the current revision is bad or good, if, for instance, some other change prevents it from compiling successfully.

reset

svn-bisect reset

Clean up after a bisect, and return the repository to the revision it was at before you started.

help

svn-bisect help
svn-bisect help start

Gives you some useful descriptions and usage information.

SCREENSHOT

...Because, you know, no software documentation is complete without a flashy screenshot these days.

parrot-trunk% svn-bisect start --min 25000 --max 26000
Running: svn info
Running: svn log -q -rHEAD:PREV
Running: svn log -q -r25000:26000
There are 840 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25488.
Running: svn update -r25488
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect before
There are 419 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25726.
Running: svn update -r25726
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 209 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25593.
Running: svn update -r25593
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 104 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25541.
Running: svn update -r25541
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 52 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25515.
Running: svn update -r25515
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 26 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25502.
Running: svn update -r25502
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 13 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25495.
Running: svn update -r25495
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect before
There are 6 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25499.
Running: svn update -r25499
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect before
There are 2 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25501.
Running: svn update -r25501
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
There are 1 revs left in the pool.  Choosing r25500.
Running: svn update -r25500
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect after
This is the end of the road!  The change occurred in r25500.
parrot-trunk% svn-bisect reset
Running: svn update -r27252

AUTHOR

Mark Glines <mark-cpan@glines.org>

THANKS

* Thanks to the git-bisect author(s), for coming up with a user interface that I actually like. * Thanks to Will Coleda for inspiring me to actually write and release this. * Thanks to the Parrot project for having so much random stuff going on as to make a tool like this necessary.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2008 Mark Glines.

It is distributed under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0. For details, see the "LICENSE" file packaged alongside this tool.