Option to ignore git submodules

[Mmdixon]

git grep by default does not search for files within a git submodule, even though they appear like normal directories.
rg on the other hand will by default recurse into these directories.

Since .gitignore is supported, it would be convenient to support how git searches when there are submodules. (Either by default and turn off with one of the -u flags, or provide some other flag besides explicitly black listing the submodule folders.)

[BurntSushi]

How can rg detect whether a directory is a submodule or not?

(Running a git command is not something I want to do.)

[BurntSushi]

I'd like to close this. If there's a simple way to detect submodules that doesn't sacrifice performance, I might be willing to support that. One thing I'm worried about is that I personally don't have much experience with submodules, so I don't know whether it's the Right Thing to ignore them or not. My suspicion is yes, it is right, because I tend to see them used as a way to vendor dependencies.

[mengelbrecht]

If it is going to be implemented please make it optional. Internal libraries shared between multiple projects can also be included as submodules. In that case I want to search them too e.g. when performing a global refactoring.

[Mmdixon]

@BurntSushi there will be a .gitmodules file with a list of the following format:

[submodule "myName"]
    path = src/myName
    url = someUrl
# repeat

Here, the path has the folder src/myName the start of the submodule (which is another git repository).

[Kha]

More importantly, there should be a .git file in the submodule workdir. So a general option to ignore nested repositories should cover submodules.

[Mmdixon]

ah that is true too, a .git file instead of folder in the submodule directory.

[BurntSushi]

I think the .git file thing is a newer feature of git though?

I think I'd like to ask that you use .ignore files to explicitly skip searching submodule directories.

With that said, if someone submitted a PR to the ignore crate that added support for ignoring submodules (which was disabled by default), then I'd be OK adding a new flag to ripgrep to enable that.

[BurntSushi]

I'm going to close this as part of a process of culling the issue tracker to things that are likely to be implemented. I think my previous comment still stands, but I would still rather not add a new flag and instead just insist that this be part of using ripgrep's .ignore file functionality.

[BatmanAoD]

Would you still be open to a PR on the ignore crate to support ignoring nested git directories?

I think the .git file thing is a newer feature of git though?

If I understand correctly, the idea is just to check for the existence of the standard .git/ directory containing git metadata, so not a new feature of git at all. I.e., the check would be something like:

• when searching in a git repository rooted at /repo/root,
• if /repo/root/foo/bar/.git/ exists,
• ignore all of /repo/root/foo/bar.