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

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 11:01:22AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
there is no code to be written.  But if somebody wants to draw a
distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).

That is all true.

If we were to have a new 'grep' attribute that can be used to
express 'It is OK to diff two versions of this path, but hits by
grep in this path is useless' (and verse versa), the built-in macro
attribute 'binary' should also be updated with it.  A path being
'binary' currently means '-diff -merge -text' but it should also
mean '-grep' in the new world, if we were to go in that direction.

I think it would do so automatically. There is no "grep" attribute
given, so we fall back to the "-diff" attribute. But I do not mind
modifying the macro to be more explicit.

Note also that I am not volunteering to work on this, nor am I convinced
it's actually worth pursuing. I've yet to see a useful case where you
would want text diffs but not greps (or vice versa), and if we can avoid
cluttering the attribute space, we should. I was mostly pointing it out
that it is not logically inconsistent to want such a thing. :)

If somebody does look into it, I suspect the place to start is modifying
userdiff_find_by_path to optionally prefer "grep" to "diff".

-Peff