Search all of Git history for a string? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Try the following commands to search the string inside all previous tracked files:

git log --patch  | less +/searching_string

or

git rev-list --all | GIT_PAGER=cat xargs git grep 'search_string'

which needs to be run from the parent directory where you'd like to do the searching.

Answer 2

git rev-list --all | (
    while read revision; do
        git grep -F 'password' $revision
    done
)

Answer 3

Git can search diffs with the -S option (it's called pickaxe in the docs)

git log -S password

This will find any commit that added or removed the string password. Here a few options:

• -p: will show the diffs. If you provide a file (-p file), it will generate a patch for you.
• -G: looks for differences whose added or removed line matches the given regexp, as opposed to -S, which "looks for differences that introduce or remove an instance of string".
• --all: searches over all branches and tags; alternatively, use --branches[=<pattern>] or --tags[=<pattern>]