The question "How to grep (search) committed code in the git history?" recommends:
git grep <regexp> $(git rev-list --all)
That searches through all the commits, which should include all the branches.
Another form would be:
git rev-list --all | (
while read revision; do
git grep -F 'yourWord' $revision
done
)
You can find even more example in this article:
I tried the above on one project large enough that git complained about the argument size, so if you run into this problem, do something like:
git rev-list --all | (while read rev; do git grep -e <regexp> $rev; done)
(see an alternative in the last section of this answer, below)
Don't forget those settings, if you want them:
# Allow Extended Regular Expressions
git config --global grep.extendRegexp true
# Always Include Line Numbers
git config --global grep.lineNumber true
This alias can help too:
git config --global alias.g "grep --break --heading --line-number"
Update August 2016: R.M. recommends in the comments
I got a "fatal: bad flag '->' used after filename" when trying the git branch version. The error was associated with a HEAD aliasing notation.
I solved it by adding a sed '/->/d' in the pipe, between the tr and the xargs commands.
git branch -a | tr -d * | sed '/->/d' | xargs git grep <regexp>
That is:
alias grep_all="git branch -a | tr -d * | sed '/->/d' | xargs git grep"
grep_all <regexp>
This is an improvement over the solution chernjie had suggested, since git rev-list --all is an overkill.
A more refined command can be:
# Don't use this, see above
git branch -a | tr -d * | xargs git grep <regexp>
Which will allow you to search only branches (including remote branches)
You can even create a bash/zsh alias for it:
# Don't use this, see above
alias grep_all="git branch -a | tr -d * | xargs git grep"
grep_all <regexp>
