diff --git a/t/t5310-pack-bitmaps.sh b/t/t5310-pack-bitmaps.sh
index 7ba7d294a5..b8645ae070 100755
--- a/t/t5310-pack-bitmaps.sh
+++ b/t/t5310-pack-bitmaps.sh
@@ -81,13 +81,9 @@ rev_list_tests() {
 	'
 
 	test_expect_success "enumerate --objects ($state)" '
-		git rev-list --objects --use-bitmap-index HEAD >tmp &&
-		cut -d" " -f1 <tmp >tmp2 &&
-		sort <tmp2 >actual &&
-		git rev-list --objects HEAD >tmp &&
-		cut -d" " -f1 <tmp >tmp2 &&
-		sort <tmp2 >expect &&
-		test_cmp expect actual
+		git rev-list --objects --use-bitmap-index HEAD >actual &&
+		git rev-list --objects HEAD >expect &&
+		test_bitmap_traversal expect actual
 	'
 
 	test_expect_success "bitmap --objects handles non-commit objects ($state)" '
diff --git a/t/test-lib-functions.sh b/t/test-lib-functions.sh
index 284c52d076..352c213d52 100644
--- a/t/test-lib-functions.sh
+++ b/t/test-lib-functions.sh
@@ -1516,3 +1516,30 @@ test_set_port () {
 	port=$(($port + ${GIT_TEST_STRESS_JOB_NR:-0}))
 	eval $var=$port
 }
+
+# Compare a file containing rev-list bitmap traversal output to its non-bitmap
+# counterpart. You can't just use test_cmp for this, because the two produce
+# subtly different output:
+#
+#   - regular output is in traversal order, whereas bitmap is split by type,
+#     with non-packed objects at the end
+#
+#   - regular output has a space and the pathname appended to non-commit
+#     objects; bitmap output omits this
+#
+# This function normalizes and compares the two. The second file should
+# always be the bitmap output.
+test_bitmap_traversal () {
+	if test "$1" = "--no-confirm-bitmaps"
+	then
+		shift
+	elif cmp "$1" "$2"
+	then
+		echo >&2 "identical raw outputs; are you sure bitmaps were used?"
+		return 1
+	fi &&
+	cut -d' ' -f1 "$1" | sort >"$1.normalized" &&
+	sort "$2" >"$2.normalized" &&
+	test_cmp "$1.normalized" "$2.normalized" &&
+	rm -f "$1.normalized" "$2.normalized"
+}