How to use ignore file from a child directory

[mhanberg]

Hi!

I am trying to write an alias to quickly search for a string in all projects.

What i'm noticing is that things like dependency folders (like deps in Elixir or node_modules in npm` are showing up, so I assume that the .gitignore file is not being respected.

Basically, I'd like to run ripgrep from directory A, but respect the gitignore files for each project P1, P2, etc

In this example, assume that the git ignore in P1 has the normal npm ignore globs and P2 has the normal Elixir ignore globs. I would want to be able to run ripgrep in directory A, but for it to ignore the node_modules files and the deps files

A/P1/.gitignore
A/P1/node_modules/foo/index.js
A/P1/src/bar.js
A/P1/src/baz.js
A/P1/src/bob.js
A/P2/.gitignore
A/P2/deps/foo/main.ex
A/P2/lib/bar.ex
A/P2/lib/baz.ex
A/P2/lib/bob.ex

Is this possible?

[BurntSushi]

Yes. It should work. Consider this directory tree:

$ tree -a
.
├── p1
│   ├── foo.rs
│   ├── .gitignore
│   └── node_modules
│       └── foo.rs
└── p2
    ├── deps
    │   └── foo.rs
    ├── foo.rs
    └── .gitignore

With the contents of .gitignore:

$ cat p1/.gitignore
/node_modules
$ cat p2/.gitignore
/deps

Let's run rg --files to show what will be searched:

$ rg --files
p2/foo.rs
p1/foo.rs
p1/node_modules/foo.rs
p2/deps/foo.rs

But wait, why are the node_modules and deps files showing up? That's because neither p1 nor p2 are actually git repos. ripgrep only respects gitignore files inside git repos, and ripgrep detects git repos by the presence or absence of .git. So let's create that:

$ mkdir {p1,p2}/.git

And now, rg --files shows what you would expect:

$ rg --files
p2/foo.rs
p1/foo.rs

So if this isn't working for you, then I think you'll need to give me something that I can reproduce.

[mhanberg]

Thanks for the explanation, I'll make sure I'm not doing anything else wrong first, and if I still can't figure it out i'll bring a repo case.

Thanks for the response!

[BurntSushi]

Aye. Don't forget about the --debug flag. It should tell you which file is being ignored and why.

[mhanberg]

ahh, I figured it out. Your bit about only using .gitignore for actual git repos was the missing piece.

I had one project that was just plain strange as well as 3 that weren't git repos... 😅.

I appreciate your time and help here, thanks!

[BurntSushi]

Yeah I figured that was the case! Glad it's working!