Git

Binary search algorithm is a search algorithm that finds the position of a target value within a sorted array. It cuts off the target array in half in a pass, so that it has a worst-case performance of O(log n).

We all know that it's an efficient searching algorithm, but the strategy behind it also applies for narrowing down other problem space, for example, finding out when a bug is first introduced in a series of git commits.

Last week I came into a problem with Git, that I can't fetch the remote branch that I just pushed to. It was so weird because I can push it. It never happens before, and it happened when I was in a rush to rebase my code, as someone in my team pushed his code.

After searching, it seemed that the configuration of fetch of that repo was different(this Stack Overflow thread for example) than before, it was specified that only master can be fetched. It worked after I changed it to +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*.

Sometimes, I need to revert a series of commits that I've already pushed, doing a git hard reset (git reset --hard) is not an option, as someone may already have new commits based on mine.

For example, assume that I've made a few commits like below:

65a2c62 * commit 10
25cad43 * commit 9
72ad583 * commit 8
ceebf9a * commit 7
acf8a11 * commit 6
28d526f * commit 5
63af1e2 * commit 4
982c71c * commit 3
0fb4c2d * commit 2
acf9da1 * commit 1
b5f9933 * commit 0

For whatever reason, I need to "drop" the changes made by commit 6 to commit 10, that is, go back to "commit 5" without deleting these commits.