Subject: Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2015 22:03:54 -0800

Jeff King <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 12:56:10PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> > As in, while working on a specific project, I sometimes just want to
>> > exclude, for the time being, a bunch of stuff from 'git grep'.
>> 
>> The key word here is "for the time being", though.  What would you
>> do once you are done with the "for the time being" activity?  "git
>> config --unset"?
>
> IMHO this is being too paternalistic. You can already shoot yourself
> in the foot by configuring an alias to grep, running your alias, and
> wondering why it does not produce the results you wanted.

Yeah, as I said, it is a deliberately paternalistic stance.  But at
least when I say "git mygrep" using the alias mechanism and get a
result that is different from what I expect from "git grep", I would
know I am doing something different with "mygrep" from "grep", no?

And a great thing about that "use alias" approach is that we can
sidestep the entire "then what should I do when I have to override
the configured thing for one-shot invocation?" question, as there is
an obvious simple answer "don't use that alias but use the
underlying command".