Book Image

Git Version Control Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Kenneth Geisshirt, Emanuele Zattin(EUR), Aske Olsson, Rasmus Voss
Book Image

Git Version Control Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Kenneth Geisshirt, Emanuele Zattin(EUR), Aske Olsson, Rasmus Voss

Overview of this book

Git is one of the most popular tools for versioning. With over 100 practical, self-contained tutorials, this updated version of the bestselling Git Version Control Cookbook examines the common pain points and best practices to help you solve problems related to versioning. Each recipe addresses a specific problem and offers a proven, best-practice solution with insights into how it works. You’ll get started by learning about the Git data model and how it stores files, along with gaining insights on how to commit changes to a database. Using simple commands, you’ll also understand how to navigate through the database. Once you have accustomed yourself to the basics, you’ll explore techniques to configure Git with the help of comprehensive examples and configuration targets. Further into the book, you’ll get up to speed with branches and recovery from mistakes. You’ll also discover the features of Git rebase and how to use regular Git to merge other branches. The later chapters will guide you in exploring Git notes and learning to utilize the update, list, and search commands. Toward the concluding chapters, you’ll focus on repository maintenance, patching, and offline sharing. By the end of this book, you’ll have grasped various tips and tricks, and have a practical understanding of best-practice solutions for common problems related to versioning.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Debugging with git bisect


The git bisect command is an excellent tool to find which commit caused a bug in the repository. The tool is particularly useful if you are looking at a long list of commits that may contain the bug. The bisect command performs a binary search through the commit history to find the commit that introduced the bug as fast as possible. The binary search method, or bisection method, as it is also called, is a search method where an algorithm finds the position of a key in a sorted array. In each step of the algorithm, the key is compared to the middle value of the array and if they match, the position is returned. Otherwise, the algorithm repeats its search in the subarray to the right or left of the middle value, depending on whether the middle value was greater or less than the key. In the Git context, the list of commits in the history makes up for the array of values to be tested, and the key can be a test if the code can be compiled successfully at the given commit...