Including some hidden files and directories in the search

[nordlow]

Generally, how do prevent ripgrep from skipping a specific set of (hidden) files and directories (starting with a dot), in my case .gitlab-ci.yml?

Alternatively, how do I make ripgrep ignore only a certain of files and directories such VCS directories and file patterns registered in .gitignore.

I'm not certain which filtering technique that is the most compact to express.

I tried

rg --hidden --iglob '.git' ...

because I never (seldom) want to search .git directories but that also ignores the .gitlab-ci.yml file. I've scanned through the docs but couldn't find a flag that suited my needs. I'm missing a flag --iglob-regex I could use as

rg --hidden --iglob-regex '^.git$' ...

or alternatively

rg --glob-regex '^.gitlab-ci.yml$' ...

And

rg --glob '.gitlab-ci.yml' ...

is not usable to me as it skips other files.

I simply want the default behavior of rg except I want to specify a set of files starting with a dot to be included in the search. In the general case I believe the least surprising behavior (correct?) for rg would be to search hidden files if they are registered by .git (added and commited) as in my case.

[BurntSushi]

Can you just add !.gitlab-ci.yml to a .ignore file? That should whitelist it and include it in your searches for the directory in which the .ignore file resides.

[nordlow]

Thanks. That works but it's not ideal because I need to pollute quite a lot of repos with this file. I still strongly believe the vc-registered files should be searched by default regardless of whether they start with a dot or not or whether or not it's marked as hidden in the filesystem.

[BurntSushi]

ripgrep doesn't work by asking which files are tracked. It works by looking at ignore files. (This has been reported before. See: #340 (comment).)

You don't need to "pollute a bunch of repos" with a .ignore file for this. You can put one global .ignore file somewhere and then add it to your ripgrep config file with --ignore-file.

Even if ripgrep knew which files your VC system tracked, the --hidden flag would still do what it says it does: it would ignore hidden files.