🚀 Support for "git grep" colorization, specifically with the -W / --function-context flag #769

zachriggle · 2021-11-08T19:02:44Z

Hey @dandavison! Thanks for making such an absolutely indispensable tool like delta!

Feature Request

delta is great for diffs (and soon blame?), but I have a suggestion* for an additional mode that might be useful to others -- the ability to syntax-highlight git grep output!

Why `git grep`?

I mention git grep specifically as opposed to grep / ack / ag/ pt / rg because of two extremely powerful features of git grep that the competition lack.

Boolean Expressions

First, let's look at its ability to have complex nested boolean expressions like --and --not and grouping which make git grep very powerful. For example, let's say we wanted to search for certain kmalloc invocations that also DO NOT have GFP_KERNEL or GFP_ATOMIC. Yes, you could do e.g. `grep kmalloc | grep -vE 'GFP_(KERNEL|ATOMIC)', but for the sake of demonstration...

Full Function Context

More importantly, it also has the ability to show the entire function in which a match resides with --function-context (-W).

Note the =, :, and - markers after the line numbers, indicating lines-with-match, the function name, and context lines.

(Large screenshot warning)

Example Output

I've jury rigged a (very ugly zsh-based) solution** that gives me effectively what I'm asking for in this feature request, but it would be better if it were directly integrated into delta (and others would also be able to benefit from this). Effectively, I parse the markers and shells out to bat to show and highlight the correct lines.

Added Bonus Functionality!

While git grep is very powerful, if you look at the second screenshot above, you'll note that there is only ONE line matching the query -- line 1482. However, every instance of sizeof and ; etc that are in the query are also highlighted.

I'm not sure why Git does this, but by parsing out the symbols at the beginning of the line, delta could be even BETTER by not highlighting these partial-matches-in-the-same-function. Note that my example output (third screenshot) does not replicate this undesirable behavior.

Additional Niceties

For many of the default themes, the "highlight" color for bat is not ideal. I work around this by using a custom-compiled theme based off solarized-dark, to effectively achieve the same highlight color as delta uses for added (green) lines.

Hopefully this isn't an issue for delta, because you can just use the internal setting for whatever the "line added" theme color is.

Closing Remarks & Comments

Let me know what you think of the idea!

* This suggestion might belong better in the bat project, but I feel like it fits with delta better due to the useful functionality is based on Git (i.e., git grep -W and git log -p -W), delta having good support and features for lots of Git things with highlighting, and because bat is just a highlighter for languages and should probably remain pure that way.

** _Technically it's a wrapper around bat, i.e. it parses the --function-context markers. I showed the command-line that it generates in the screenshot above, for an example.

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dandavison · 2021-11-10T19:18:09Z

Hi @zachriggle, this seems like a great idea. It's tempting to think that it shouldn't be too hard to have an initial go at, based on way the git blame handler that we already have is added. Thanks also for the detailed write-up with extra suggestions.

Would you mind expanding on this?

by parsing out the symbols at the beginning of the line

Fixes #769

dandavison · 2021-11-11T20:08:32Z

I've made a start at this in branch 769-git-grep

Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

zachriggle · 2021-11-16T06:10:03Z

To expound upon

by parsing out the symbols at the beginning of the line

Ultimately, Git internally knows when a line matches the query given to it.

Consider:

git grep --no-index -C1 -e foo --and -e bar --and -e fizz --and -e buzz file.txt

It will only return hits / "matching" lines for lines that contain ALL FOUR queries, due to --and.

However, if you use -W or --function-context, when displaying the rest of the function (or -C for contextual lines) it will use ANSI escape codes to highlight ANY match.

# file.txt
This is fizz
All four: foo bar fizz buzz
This is buzz

The middle line will have a beginning-of-line marker indicating it's a matching line.

Due to Git's incorrect behavior, it will actually highlight fizz and buzz on the first/last line, despite the line not being a full match.

I would expect any tool building on top of git grep to honor the beginning-of-line marker for this-line-is-a-match, rather than replicating git grep's incorrect behavior to

* Note: I've not actually tested the behavior with -C, but I know this occurs with -W.

dandavison · 2021-11-16T17:12:45Z

Thanks for that explanation @zachriggle. When you have a moment, this branch is ready for testing: #774. I believe that it implements most of what you proposed, but there's some complexity so it would be great to know how close the behavior is to what you have in mind.

I would expect any tool building on top of git grep to honor the beginning-of-line marker for this-line-is-a-match

One minor thing is that some terminal emulators recognize file.txt:7: and render it as a clickable link, but they do not do this for file.txt-7- nor for file.txt=7=. (At least, this is so for VSCode with its integrated terminal emulator). If you enable navigate, you'll see that what I've done currently is emit the -7- and =7= forms verbatim, but not when navigate is enabled, since then we have a good visual indicator of where the match lines are and so I think it's nice to have open-at-line-in-editor-on-click functionality, i.e. I change them to :7:.

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

@zachriggle

- Handle standard filepath:code and filepath:line_number:code output as produced by `git grep`, `rg -H`, `grep -H`, etc (with -n for line numbers). - Retain the match highlighting as produced by the grep tool, and expose it in delta's color output styled with grep-match-style. (Note that --color=always is needed to retain the color if piping into delta, but not for `git grep` when delta is configured as git's pager) - Special handling of -p, and -W options of `git grep`: these display the function context in which the matches occur. - `navigate` keybindings jump between match function contexts under `git grep -p` and between matching lines under `git grep -W`. Thanks @zachriggle for the proposal. Fixes #769

dandavison · 2024-03-16T14:51:51Z

Update: @joshtriplett solved the parse ambiguities that were afflicting git grep in #1634. The latest delta release (0.17.0) has the fix.

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Handle grep output #774

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dandavison closed this as completed in #774 Nov 22, 2021

BrewTestBot mentioned this issue Mar 16, 2024

git-delta 0.17.0 Homebrew/homebrew-core#166338

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🚀 Support for "git grep" colorization, specifically with the -W / --function-context flag #769

🚀 Support for "git grep" colorization, specifically with the -W / --function-context flag #769

zachriggle commented Nov 8, 2021 •

edited

dandavison commented Nov 10, 2021 •

edited

dandavison commented Nov 11, 2021

zachriggle commented Nov 16, 2021

dandavison commented Nov 16, 2021 •

edited

dandavison commented Mar 16, 2024

🚀 Support for "git grep" colorization, specifically with the -W / --function-context flag #769

🚀 Support for "git grep" colorization, specifically with the -W / --function-context flag #769

Comments

zachriggle commented Nov 8, 2021 • edited

Feature Request

Why git grep?

Boolean Expressions

Full Function Context

Example Output

Added Bonus Functionality!

Additional Niceties

Closing Remarks & Comments

dandavison commented Nov 10, 2021 • edited

dandavison commented Nov 11, 2021

zachriggle commented Nov 16, 2021

dandavison commented Nov 16, 2021 • edited

dandavison commented Mar 16, 2024

zachriggle commented Nov 8, 2021 •

edited

Why `git grep`?

dandavison commented Nov 10, 2021 •

edited

dandavison commented Nov 16, 2021 •

edited