Colas Nahaboo personal site, with discussions about programming code, web and computing topics, surfing and SUPing, and various musings. Zola 2026-08-13T00:00:00+00:00 https://colas.nahaboo.net/tags/emacs/atom.xml 2026-08-13T00:00:00+00:00 2026-08-13T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://colas.nahaboo.net/code/gr-grep-the-whole-project-from-anywhere/ <p>I just added <strong>gr</strong> to my <a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/ColasNahaboo/colas-bash-lib">colas-bash-lib</a> collection. It is one of the essential tools I use under emacs.</p> <h2 id="the-problem">The problem<a class="zola-anchor" href="#the-problem" aria-label="Anchor link for: the-problem">🔗</a></h2> <p>I am always somewhere deep in a project, and I want to search the whole project, not just the current directory, and quickly go to found hits inside emacs, ignoring ancillary data inside <code>.git</code> dirs and similar.</p> <h2 id="the-solution">The solution<a class="zola-anchor" href="#the-solution" aria-label="Anchor link for: the-solution">🔗</a></h2> <p><code>gr</code> walks up from the current directory until it finds a <strong>mark</strong> — a file or directory named <code>.git</code>, <code>.hg</code>, <code>.jj</code>, <code>.ugrep</code> or <code>.gr</code>, indicating the root of the current project — and runs <code>ug</code> (ugrep, a better grep) recursively from there. So from anywhere in the tree:</p> <pre class="giallo" style="color: #4C4F69; background-color: #EFF1F5;" ><code data-lang="plain"><span class="giallo-l"><span>~/src/foo/sub/sub$ gr max_connections</span></span> <span class="giallo-l"><span>config/app.conf:12:4:MaxConnections = 100</span></span> <span class="giallo-l"><span>src/server.go:45:1:maxConnections := ...</span></span></code></pre> <p>The output is the classic <code>file:line:column:line</code> format of compiler errors understood by emacs, with <code>-I</code> skipping binaries and <code>--color=never</code> keeping it clean for piping.</p> <h2 id="emacs">Emacs<a class="zola-anchor" href="#emacs" aria-label="Anchor link for: emacs">🔗</a></h2> <p>The whole thing is designed to play with emacs compile mode. <code>gr</code> prints the header <code>gr: Entering directory \</code>...'<code>— in the exact format emacs expects, and only when it actually changes directory — so the relative paths in the output resolve correctly. Then it is just</code>M-x compile<code>followed by</code>next-error<code>(Ctrl-x</code>) to jump from match to match through the whole project. The precise header matters: emacs is confused by anything that does not follow its convention.</p> <p>A tip: I mapped F1/F2/F3 for easy use of emacs compile mode:</p> <pre class="giallo" style="color: #4C4F69; background-color: #EFF1F5;" ><code data-lang="plain"><span class="giallo-l"><span>;; compile: f1 search / f2 next hit / Shift-f2 previous hit</span></span> <span class="giallo-l"><span>(global-set-key [f1] &#39;compile)</span></span> <span class="giallo-l"><span>(global-set-key [f2] &#39;next-error)</span></span> <span class="giallo-l"><span>(global-set-key (kbd &quot;&lt;S-f2&gt;&quot;) &#39;previous-error)</span></span></code></pre><h2 id="custom-marks">Custom marks<a class="zola-anchor" href="#custom-marks" aria-label="Anchor link for: custom-marks">🔗</a></h2> <p>For a non-git project — or to define a sub-project root inside a monorepo — just place a <code>.gr</code> (or <code>.ugrep</code>) marker there and <code>gr</code> stops at it. Extra mark names are added with <code>GR_MARKS</code>:</p> <pre class="giallo" style="color: #4C4F69; background-color: #EFF1F5;" ><code data-lang="plain"><span class="giallo-l"><span>export GR_MARKS=&#39;svn cvs bzr fossil vscode env&#39;</span></span></code></pre><h2 id="why-i-like-it">Why I like it<a class="zola-anchor" href="#why-i-like-it" aria-label="Anchor link for: why-i-like-it">🔗</a></h2> <ul> <li><strong>One command, from anywhere</strong>: no need to know where the repo root is.</li> <li><strong>Searches everything</strong>, tracked or not — which <code>git grep</code> can't do.</li> <li><strong>Emacs-ready output</strong>: browse and jump to the matches instead of eyeballing.</li> <li><strong>Fast</strong>: it is <code>ug</code> under the hood, so no <code>grep -r</code> slowness.</li> </ul> <h2 id="installation-usage-and-more-info">Installation, Usage, and more info<a class="zola-anchor" href="#installation-usage-and-more-info" aria-label="Anchor link for: installation-usage-and-more-info">🔗</a></h2> <p><a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/ColasNahaboo/colas-bash-lib">github.com/ColasNahaboo/colas-bash-lib</a></p> <p>AI co-written: don't like, don't use.</p>