git-commit-search

CLI tool to search in git commit diff history, with added features and improvements over the native git command git log -G"<regex>".

Goes through each commit, checks the changes, and finds lines that match the regex. Then it prints all the matches.

Features

• Search for specific patterns via regex on all commits and diffs.
• Ignore file (.gcsignore) to exclude files or directories from the search, works like a .gitignore file but for the search.
• Display matching content.

Installation

cargo install --git https://github.com/marcelarie/git-commit-search

or clone the repository and build the tool using cargo:

git clone https://github.com/marcelarie/git-commit-search
cd git-commit-search
cargo build --release

Usage

Run the tool with the desired regex pattern and optional repository path:

gcs "<REGEX>" --path /path/to/repo

Examples:

# Search for the text TODO
gcs "TODO" -p ~/my-project

# Search for TODO comments with assignee
gcs "TODO\s*\(@\w+\):" -p ~/my-project

# Find password or API key assignments
gcs "(?i)(password|api_key)\s*=\s*['\"][^'\"]+['\"]"

# Find version bumps in Cargo.toml
gcs '+version\s*=\s*"\d+\.\d+\.\d+"'

Ignoring Files

Create a .gcsignore file in any directory of the project to exclude files from searches. Like .gitignore, it affects the directory it's in and all subdirectories:

For example:

# Ignore all markdown files
*.md

# Ignore a specific directory
temp/

Options

• -p, --path: The path to the repository (optional, defaults to the current directory).
• -l, --conlines: The number of context lines to display on the top and bottom of the match (optional, defaults to 1).
• --no-ignore: Ignore .gcsignore rules.

On the Roadmap

The main features and improvements planned for the tool are listed in the TODO file.

The three main goals are:

• Add ranges, from commit A to B, or from HEAD~1 to HEAD~100
• Use cache if last commit did not change
• Be really fast.
• Have an interactive mode with real-time search.
• Syntax highlighting and good output formatting.

Development

This project provides a reproducible development shell via Nix Flakes.
Once you have Nix installed with flakes enabled, you don’t need to install Rust or any other tooling locally.

nix develop

Dependencies

• rust
• git