Find in Files "files to include" override .gitignore

[borekb]

VSCode 1.12: I have a TypeScript project with a src folder and a .gitignore file containing this:

/src/**/*.js

If I search for something, it is OK with 'files to include' is empty:

but it is not OK if I scope the search:

While I'm searching only in some sup-tree of my project, all .gitignore rules should still be taken into account.

[roblourens]

It seems like ripgrep will let include globs override entries in the gitignore file. I'm not sure whether that's expected or whether we can change that. But one workaround is to use ./src syntax in 'files to include'.

[kompot]

./src seems to be broken again - regardless of syntax put to files to include .gitignore is no longer respected by ripgrep. I'm pretty sure it worked before, maybe ripgrep API change?

[roblourens]

Unfortunately that's because I changed it to not use gitignore files in parent directories which breaks that workaround.

[kompot]

This was working OK up to version 1.30.
1.31 broke this.

[roblourens]

Can you explain what you mean by "this"? This issue has been open for a long time.

[roblourens]

Sorry I see, the workaround I mentioned above will not work anymore. The only suggestion I have right now is to add patterns to search.exclude as well. I'll have to figure out why ripgrep handles gitignore patterns differently.

[kompot]

Seems like it's discussed in this ripgrep issue
BurntSushi/ripgrep#829

UPD
and there's even an unmerged PR
BurntSushi/ripgrep#963

[roblourens]

I can't tell whether that's the right issue or not. vscode does not invoke rg with a path argument, the ./ syntax is converted to glob patterns.

[kompot]

Right now I observe this bug/feature/behaviour both in vscode and in rg console output.

I have a file at path front/build/1.html. It contains string xxx. Directory front/build is gitignored.

rg xxx from project root finds nothing
rg xxx -g "front/**/*" finds xxx

same happens in vscode

searching with files to include being empty finds nothing
searching with ./front in files to include finds xxx

As a proposal: maybe vscode should always search from root and filter with files to include afterwards in memory just for UI. More work but it's near instant with ripgrep anyway.

[roblourens]

When searching a big repo, there can actually be a large perf gain by using ./ vs searching everything.

[roblourens]

I am pretty sure BurntSushi/ripgrep#829 is the correct upstream issue for this.

[emirotin]

Started happening for me even with an empty "files to include" field

[yume-chan]

I remember that some versions ago (maybe 1.2x), I could search in node_modules with these steps:

1. Find the folder I want to search in explorer
2. Right-click on it and select Find in Folder... (Code will populate the files to include input box for me)
3. Type in keyword and hit Enter

There is no need to uncheck the Use Exclude Settings and Ignore Files option.

I believed that was a "feature", and that's the behavior described in this issue.

---

But (at least) in current version (1.43.2 and 1.44-insider), I must uncheck the Use Exclude Settings and Ignore Files option to do this search.

[EsrefDurna]

Could we prioritize this issue? Because it definitely blocks effective development.
For example, I’m having an error from an module that I installed. I have to disable then enable ignore file search again and again.
Evetytime I need to search on node modules folder its so annoying. And I believe most people though that the thing what they are searching doesn’t exists on node modules folder, which can lead to many hours of frustration and waste of time for each developer.

Thank you

[mifi]

As a workaround, is there any way to hook into the exclude pattern so that we can write our own ignore logic in an extension or similar?

[localjo]

For anyone wondering about the status of this issue, it looks like the underlying ripgrep issue is a bit stale. In the meantime, I found a workaround that works for me to exclude irrelevant files from search in my multi-root workspace.

My workaround is adding this to my workspace settings.json:

  "search.exclude": {
    "**/.git": true,
    "**/node_modules": true,
    "**/tmp": true,
    "**/dist": true,
    "**/lib": true,
    "**/generated": true
  }

It's not perfect, and doesn't take into account any .gitignore files, but excluding those common patterns works well enough for me to find the files I'm looking for without sifting through loads of irrelevant results.

[mcandre]

There is no need to uncheck the Use Exclude Settings and Ignore Files option.

Lol, when I try to enable this option then VSCode stupidly resets it back again. Every time.

[RalfJung]

I am pretty sure BurntSushi/ripgrep#829 is the correct upstream issue for this.

I don't think it is. I have *.glob in my root gitignore, and when I do rg rpc_proof src/program_proof/ it all behaves as expected. However when I search for rpc_proof in vscode and specify src/program_proof/ or ./src/program_proof/ as the "files to include", then it also shows results from *.glob files that I want to have excluded.

I don't know how vscode passes "files to ignore" to ripgrep, but it doesn't seem to be as a path argument, and hence that is not the right issue.

[RalfJung]

Ah, it seems to be via globs: rg rpc_proof -g 'src/program_proof/**' replicates the vscode behavior.

[RalfJung]

Based on my above observations, solving this issue would be possible by making vscode pass things from "files to include" as directory arguments to ripgrep, rather than passing them via -g. From the comments above, it almost sounds like this used to be the case with things like ./src/program_proof, but in current vscode even the explicit ./ makes no difference. Maybe behavior was changed during the last years?

Version: 1.65.2
Commit: c722ca6c7eed3d7987c0d5c3df5c45f6b15e77d1
Date: 2022-03-10T15:36:26.048Z
Electron: 13.5.2
Chromium: 91.0.4472.164
Node.js: 14.16.0
V8: 9.1.269.39-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 5.16.0-4-amd64

[angelayanpan]

we are using VScode with Yarn Workspace. so we have many workspaces living inside 1 root and our .gitignore file was setup to ignore dist in many different paths. This issue has cause some very slow code search experience. because whenever a teammate specify a subfolder to search, it will bring in the not needed dist

we are working around with the search.exclude mentioned earlier. But would be good to have this issue resolved. or made more obvious to developers that file to include override .gitignore

[leonheess]

this is so needed, it annoys me every single day. Why would I want my ignore rules disabled just because I'm searching in a specific path??

[segevfiner]

This is even worse in multi-folder workspaces, as it will exclude a .gitignore from higher up in the repository, when opening multiple folder inside a repository, which a direct ripgrep invocation won't.

[Weetbix]

This is so annoying, and I run into this bug daily. When in a monorepo, I often want to search project folders only, but doing this includes all build files, assets, node_module files and folders etc...