http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23901
--- Comment #6 from Rosanne DiMesio dimesio@earthlink.net 2010-08-06 08:46:06 --- (In reply to comment #4)
It's not always necessary, but it doesn't hurt to do. In this case, where it's prohibitively long, I wouldn't do it, but be sure to try reverting the broken patch to make sure it's the cause. I would do the reverting test in a clean WINEPREFIX, to be sure.
In this case, it's necessary. I've already tried a regression test without reinstalling the game, and found that once the registry entries for gameux are made, if gameux is in the build tree (as it will be after the first bad bisect), all subsequent bisects show up bad, even for Wine versions that are definitely good.
There were 4 gameux patches added in between 1.2 and 1.3.0, and they don't revert cleanly. I can tell you that Wine up to the patch immediately before the first gameux patch is good. I'm building Wine now with the first gameux patch, which I expect will break it. (If it doesn't, I'll move on to the next, and so on.) So hold off on the regression test for now.