Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932434AbVIFHoj (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Sep 2005 03:44:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932438AbVIFHoj (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Sep 2005 03:44:39 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:28887 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932434AbVIFHoi (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Sep 2005 03:44:38 -0400 Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 00:44:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Sonny Rao cc: Rolf Eike Beer , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Helge Hafting , Dave Airlie , Benjamin Herrenschmidt , Michael Ellerman , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Andrew Morton Subject: Re: rc5 seemed to kill a disk that rc4-mm1 likes. Also some X trouble. In-Reply-To: <20050905195849.GA8683@kevlar.burdell.org> Message-ID: References: <200508301007.11554@bilbo.math.uni-mannheim.de> <200509050949.38842@bilbo.math.uni-mannheim.de> <20050905195849.GA8683@kevlar.burdell.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1025 Lines: 25 On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, Sonny Rao wrote: > > Can this method detect breakages that are spread across more than one > patch? I suppose it'll just trigger on the last patch commited in the > set in this case? It will trigger on just the commit that introduces the user-visible breakage, so yes, it's usually the last in a series (or the first one, for that matter). And it's not perfect. A problem that fades in and out is not something you can do binary searching on. For example, sometimes a bug gets introduced and ends up being dependent on things like cache alignment or some variable layout etc, so you only _see_ the problem occasionally, and it ends up happening due to totally unrelated changes - then the bisection algorithm ends up being totally useles.. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/