Commit f5aff6fa authored by Thorsten Leemhuis's avatar Thorsten Leemhuis Committed by Jonathan Corbet
Browse files

docs: bug-bisect: add a note about bisecting -next 



Explicitly mention how to bisect -next, as nothing in the kernel tree
currently explains that bisects between -next versions won't work well
and it's better to bisect between mainline and -next.

Co-developed-by: default avatarMark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarMark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarMark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarThorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/ec19d5fc503ff7db3d4c4ff9e97fff24cc78f72a.1730808651.git.linux@leemhuis.info
parent b934bc75

Documentation/admin-guide/bug-bisect.rst

+21 −0
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -108,6 +108,27 @@ a fully reliable and straight-forward way to reproduce the regression, too.* 
With that the process is complete. Now report the regression as described by

Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst.



Bisecting linux-next

--------------------



If you face a problem only happening in linux-next, bisect between the

linux-next branches 'stable' and 'master'. The following commands will start

the process for a linux-next tree you added as a remote called 'next'::



  git bisect start

  git bisect good next/stable

  git bisect bad next/master



The 'stable' branch refers to the state of linux-mainline that the current

linux-next release (found in the 'master' branch) is based on -- the former

thus should be free of any problems that show up in -next, but not in Linus'

tree.



This will bisect across a wide range of changes, some of which you might have

used in earlier linux-next releases without problems. Sadly there is no simple

way to avoid checking them: bisecting from one linux-next release to a later

one (say between 'next-20241020' and 'next-20241021') is impossible, as they

share no common history.



Additional reading material

---------------------------