git grep in the whole tree

Question

Normally when I issue

git grep

, it will only search the current directory and below, for instance

$ cat A

1

$ cd d

$ cat B

1

$ git grep 1

B:1

$ cd ..;git grep 1

A:1

B:1

How can I tell

git grep

"search the entire tree, no matter the current working directory I'm in"?

Answer 1

Git aliases that run shell commands are always executed in the top level directory (see the git config man page), so you can add this to your .gitconfig file:

[alias]
    rgrep = !git grep

Alternatively, you could use git rev-parse --show-toplevel to get the root directory, which you could then pass to git grep as the basis of a script or alias:

git grep $pattern -- `git rev-parse --show-toplevel`