[Question] Can rg search a symlink to a directory that is explicitly ignored by a different name?

[danemacmillan]

Hi,

What version of ripgrep are you using?

ripgrep 11.0.2
-SIMD -AVX (compiled)
+SIMD +AVX (runtime)

How did you install ripgrep?

brew

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 (19D76)

Describe your question, feature request, or bug.

I have the following directory structure:

project/releases/{dated-release-1,dated-release-2,dated-release-n}
project/current -> (symlink to ./releases/dated-release-n)

The current symlink is a sibling of the releases directory. current is a symlink to one of the dated release directories contained within releases. Each dated release directory is just a more up to date snapshot of a codebase.

Given that each dated release directory is almost the same, it would be nice for rg to ignore them. In fact, ignore all of them. The only dated release directory I'm interested in is the one symlinked to current.

The problem I'm having is that specifying an ignore rule for the releases directory also prevents the current symlink and its contents from being searched. I think I understand why this would happen.

Is it possible to search under the current symlink while ignoring all the releases's dated release directories? I realize this is a paradox of sorts, so I'm asking in the off chance I overlooked this in the documentation.

To be clear, rg is being invoked with the ability to follow symlinks, and does work when the ignore rule is removed.

Thanks!

[BurntSushi]

In the future, could you please include more details in your bug report? In particular, please show your problem rather than just describing it. e.g., Instead of "The problem I'm having is that specifying an ignore rule for the releases directory also prevents the current symlink and its contents from being searched.", please show exactly what you tried.

For example:

$ mkdir /tmp/ripgrep-1484
$ cd /tmp/ripgrep-1484
$ mkdir -p project/releases/{dated-release-1,dated-release-2,dated-release-n}
$ ln -s project/releases/dated-release-n current
$ touch project/releases/dated-release-{1,2,n}/test
$ tree
.
├── current -> project/releases/dated-release-n
└── project
    └── releases
        ├── dated-release-1
        │   └── test
        ├── dated-release-2
        │   └── test
        └── dated-release-n
            └── test

6 directories, 3 files

$ rg --files
project/releases/dated-release-2/test
project/releases/dated-release-1/test
project/releases/dated-release-n/test

$ rg --files -L
current/test
project/releases/dated-release-n/test
project/releases/dated-release-1/test
project/releases/dated-release-2/test

$ echo '/project/releases' > .ignore

$ rg --files -L
current/test

Which seems to do exactly what you want.

[danemacmillan]

Will do--I'll keep that in mind for the future.

After noticing your example worked, I dug deeper. While my custom ignore file was being overlooked, the .ignore file in the example directory at /project/releases/.ignore was working. My custom ignore file contained the same content, though, so it should have gotten ignored at that point, instead of getting detected by the inline .ignore file.

I have a RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH environment variable set; its contents were:

--hidden
--search-zip
--smart-case
--ignore-vcs
--ignore-file=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ripgrep/ignore

The contents of the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ripgrep/ignore file are:

releases

I would then run the following command on the example structure:

rg --files -L

The output would still list:

current/test
project/releases/dated-release-n/test
project/releases/dated-release-1/test
project/releases/dated-release-2/test

I then tried differing paths for the --ignore-file option, one at a time:

--ignore-file=~/.config/ripgrep/ignore
--ignore-file="$HOME/.config/ripgrep/ignore"

I then tried passing the option to rg directly:

rg --files -L --ignore-file=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ripgrep/ignore

That worked. The releases directory was ignored, while the current symlink content was being shown. Great.

That got me thinking about environment variables, so I tried an absolute path in the config—and it worked:

--ignore-file=/Users/danemacmillan/.config/ripgrep/ignore

My takeaway from this is that environment variables are not understood when used in the RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH config file. Is that right?

I don't know if this is something you'd want to support, but I'll propose it for your consideration.

Thanks a bunch for helping me through this.

[BurntSushi]

My takeaway from this is that environment variables are not understood when used in the RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH config file. Is that right?

Correct. In particular, from the section on config files in the GUIDE:

In particular, there is no escaping. Each line is given to ripgrep as a single command line argument verbatim.

The config format is deliberately simplistic. While it does prevent some conveniences like environment variables, it makes the file very easy to read with no additional layer of escaping. e.g., If environment variables were supported then there would need to be some sort of escaping mechanism to permit literals of the form $var.