Definition
Plain language
Finding which change broke something by repeatedly splitting the list of suspects in half.
As stated in the literature
Binary search over a sequence of commits or a build batch to isolate the single change responsible for a failure; used in merge queues to reject the offending commit while landing the rest.
Also called: bisects, bisection
Why it matters: It quickly finds the one bad change among many so the rest can still go through, keeping development from grinding to a halt.
For example, if one change in a batch of forty broke the build, the system tests the first twenty, then ten, narrowing down until it pins the exact culprit.
Heard on the show
“If the combined build breaks, the queue bisects the batch to find the one commit that broke it, rejects that, and lands the good ones.”Episode 101 — Treating Math Formalization Like a Codebase, and Where the Agents Cheat