Search a git repo

Something not mentioned is

git log -S"pattern"

This is useful for searching diffs. If your repo is small this is quite fast. However for large repos, it can be slow which is why I use my own diffs indexer. Below is a screenshot of what my diffs search looks like.

http://screenshots.gitsense.com/diffs-search.html

For most people, git log -S should work fine but my solution is targeted for enterprise, which is why I went my own route.

Very interesting. If you haven't tried grepping the files in your git repository (as opposed to using regular `grep` or your editor's search function, which doesn't ignore files outside version control), it's surprisingly powerful.

I wasn't aware that `git grep` was as customizable as is shown in the article. I tend to use `ag` (the silver searcher) instead of regular grep, which besides being fast produces nice colored output. Here's a `zsh` function I put into my ~/.zshrc which allows me to apply ag only to files tracked by git: https://gist.github.com/pesterhazy/9294048

Using full blown Perl regular expressions is easier for Debian/Ubunt users: Just use them!

I have never understood why --with-pcre is not the default in Homebrew, --without-pcre should be the option.

Is something as elementary as `git grep` really front page HN material?

I tried the above on one project large enough that git complained about the argument size, so if you run into this problem, do something like:

   git rev-list --all | (while read rev; do git grep -e <regexp> $rev; done)

The '--all' argument tells rev-list to emit the history of every single ref. You probably only want a branch. Also, this is a job for xargs:

   git rev-list master | xargs git grep -e <regexp>

Slightly tangential, but related: on windows, Agent Ransack is an awesome program for searching through files/directories. It has a great UI, is quite fast, and has all the features you could want (regexes on filename and/or file contents, search history, etc). It is really helpful for doing quick lookups to see where methods/classes/variables are being used in the codebase.

are ninjas well known for being good at searching?

git-grep is something you only learn about when you work on a large codebase, and something you never stop using afterwards.

By which they mean, "Leaving the repository owner bleeding out from a cut carotid artery, never knowing what happened to them?"

Didn't we make a pact to stop using "ninja" and "rock star"? Excepting, of course, an interviewee who a) arrives in the conference room via the air ducts while the the interview's back is turned, or b) who snorts lines of coke off the whiteboard tray and then smashes holes in the sheetrock walls with a Fender Stratocaster.