Re: git bisect should return 1 when the first bad commit is found

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 01:32:16PM -0700, Pedro Larroy wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your answer.
>> 
>> I was expecting the HEAD to point to the first bad commit.
>> 
>> In mercurial, the exit status tells you information about the
>> bisection process:  https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/help/bisect
>> 
>> Sure one can parse stdout, it's just more tedious than just checking
>> the return code and having the HEAD left to the original bad commit.
>
> I think it might be nice for Git to write a well-known refname (like
> BISECT_RESULT or similar) so that you can refer to that instead of
> having to read stdout (whether by machine or by a user
> cutting-and-pasting). And I cannot offhand think of a particular reason
> why that could not just be HEAD (instead of something bisect-specific)
> after the bisect finishes.

As Christian downthread reminds us, that is what the bisect/bad ref
is (which I totally forgot when I gave the earlier response).  I do
not think we need a new ref, but I do not think it is so bad to add
an option "git bisect --exit-code ( --good | --bad ) [<commit-ish>]"
that makes the command usually exit with non-zero status.  Unless we
have found the final answer successfully, that is, and in that case
the command would exit with 0 status to signall "all done".

But that should be an option.