Clean way to run archived commits

[teacup]

This question is about Bitbucket, which I mainly use via SourceTree, so I don't know much about the git command line.

Occasionally I encounter regression bugs; to help fixing said regressions one strategy is to...

• Guess the oldest commit which (putatively) does not exhibit the bug, 
• Check out everything and run the code to ensure that it actually works (or do it all over again)
• Diff the latest known good version with the current version and analyse.

As an attempt to do just this, I typically use the checkout button in SourceTree, which results in a detached head and doesn't feel very clean. Is there a better way to do this?

[Balázs Szakmáry · Accepted solution]

Checking out commits and having the head detached is exactly the way to do this.

Improvement ideas:

• Have a separate clone for the investigations, that way you can easily compare the full tree of the current version to the old one.
• Take a look at Git Bisect. It might be useful to automate what you are doing.

[teacup]

I already use separate clones although I do find it a bit cumbersome (but have no objections if it is the best known way to do it with bitbucket and sourcetree...). "Easily compare" - by which you mean easily run both versions side by side? (Or you meant "compare" more literally?)

[Balázs Szakmáry]

I mean, diff the whole file tree, compile+run both or whatever comparison you need. :)