This is a tool that will help Windows users help us developers nail down issues that they experience. We get a lot of issue reports where we are unable to reproduce the issue, and the only builds that were tested were the latest stable and some build that isn't a million years old. That doesn't help much! That still leaves literally thousands of builds to test. However, nobody wants nor expects anybody else to test thousands of builds, so this is where bisecting comes in!
Bisecting is a process where you use a binary search to narrow down the builds affecting the issue, and eventually finding it, without testing thousands. However, doing this by hand is a real pain. Linux and OS X (kinda) users can just use git which has it's own bisection system to automate the process, but Windows users are pretty much stuck doing it by hand unless they want to learn how to use msvc by CLI. And that sucks because most of our windows users do not want to do that.
So this is where my tool comes in. It allows you to select two builds, one build where you know the issue didn't happen, and one where you know it did. The program then automates downloading, extracting, and running each build, allowing you to test for your issue rapidly. My program also allows you to auto-boot a title every launch so you don't have to manually do that. After each test, you close dolphin and it asks whether the issue happened. Give the program your answer, and based on your answer it will choose the next build. It repeats this process until it has one build left.
What can you do with this information? You provide the build number that broke your issue with your issue report or forum thread. This lets us get on the hunt for that bug in code MUCH faster and possibly get a fix going.
How to use:
Planned improvements:
Download:
Make sure you have the .NET 4.5 framework installed!: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool/releases
Report Issues:
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool/issues
Source:
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool
Feedback, PRs, input, all appreciated. Hope this helps!
Bisecting is a process where you use a binary search to narrow down the builds affecting the issue, and eventually finding it, without testing thousands. However, doing this by hand is a real pain. Linux and OS X (kinda) users can just use git which has it's own bisection system to automate the process, but Windows users are pretty much stuck doing it by hand unless they want to learn how to use msvc by CLI. And that sucks because most of our windows users do not want to do that.
So this is where my tool comes in. It allows you to select two builds, one build where you know the issue didn't happen, and one where you know it did. The program then automates downloading, extracting, and running each build, allowing you to test for your issue rapidly. My program also allows you to auto-boot a title every launch so you don't have to manually do that. After each test, you close dolphin and it asks whether the issue happened. Give the program your answer, and based on your answer it will choose the next build. It repeats this process until it has one build left.
What can you do with this information? You provide the build number that broke your issue with your issue report or forum thread. This lets us get on the hunt for that bug in code MUCH faster and possibly get a fix going.
How to use:
- Download and run the tool (I highly recommend extracting it to an empty folder)
- Select your two builds
- Optionally select a title to auto boot
- Click start
- After each test, close Dolphin. The tool will ask you a question each time.
Planned improvements:
- Add support for toggling always running with a clean config.
- Add support for copying global config to the testing environment and keeping that persistent for testing only.
- Add support for running with a clean config, but keeping it persistent across testing
- Localization support. Idly looking into Transifex.
Download:
Make sure you have the .NET 4.5 framework installed!: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool/releases
Report Issues:
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool/issues
Source:
https://github.com/Helios747/DolphinBisectTool
Feedback, PRs, input, all appreciated. Hope this helps!
