Search entire repository commit history for a string

Summary

• The purpose of this knowledge article is to detail a method for searching through an individual repositories entire commit history for a particular string of text

• At present, our existing code search functionality within the UI is limited to the main branch, and does not search through files that are larger than 320kb in size

• The method highlighted in the steps below will search all branches in the repository and does not have this file size restriction

Solution

Procedure

Searching through a repository commit history can be achieved using a combination of the git grep/git rev-list commands, these commands can then be fine-tuned to display the output in a human-readable format:

1. You can execute the most basic of search commands by simply using the traditional git grep command, the command will print a list of binary filenames that match the string "test" in the example below but these do not include detailed information concerning the commit history:

   EXAMPLE

   1 2 3 4 5 > git grep "test" bitbucket-pipelines.yml:# Use a skeleton to build, test and deploy using manual and parallel steps bitbucket-pipelines.yml: mytestcache: bitbucket-pipelines.yml: - testcache.zip bitbucket-pipelines.yml: - test.sh

2. When you combine the git grep command with the git rev-list command - this will show you more detailed information (eg commit hash, line number) for each and every commit across all branches where the "test" string appears.

   EXAMPLE

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 > git grep --break --heading --line-number "test" $(git rev-list --abbrev-commit --all) 9f1a0cd:bitbucket-pipelines.yml 2:# Use a skeleton to build, test and deploy using manual and parallel steps 10: name: Deploy to test 13: - echo $test 14: - echo "TESTING $test"

3. (Optional): The above commands are listed as a guide only, if you wished to customise these so that they produce a different output you can feel free to do so by exploring the extra flags/functions of the git grep/git rev-list commands