ripgrep

Stow package for ~/.config/ripgrep/config. The config file is only read if RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH points at it — rg does not look for it by default.

Layout
Required env var
Settings
Colors (Dracula)
Verifying it’s loaded
Fresh-machine setup

Layout

File	Stows to
`ripgrep/.config/ripgrep/config`	`~/.config/ripgrep/config`

Required env var

zsh/.zshrc sets:

export RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/.config/ripgrep/config"

Without that variable, rg ignores the config file completely.

Settings

--smart-case               # case-insensitive unless the query has uppercase
--hidden                   # search dotfiles (still respects .gitignore)
--max-columns=200          # cap matched-line width
--max-columns-preview      # show a truncation message on long lines

Glob excludes (additional to whatever .gitignore says):

--glob=!.git/*
--glob=!node_modules/*
--glob=!.venv/*
--glob=!__pycache__/*
--glob=!dist/*
--glob=!build/*
--glob=!target/*           # Rust + JVM build dirs
--glob=!vendor/*           # Go vendored deps
--glob=!*.min.js
--glob=!*.min.css
--glob=!*.map              # source maps

Custom filetype aliases — rg --type <alias> "pattern":

--type-add=tf:*.{tf,tfvars}
--type-add=k8s:*.{yaml,yml}
--type-add=helm:*.{yaml,yml,tpl}
--type-add=proto:*.proto

--hidden makes rg walk into .config/, .local/, etc. — the --glob exclusions then prune the noisy ones.

Anything you override on the CLI wins over the config file.

Colors (Dracula)

The official Dracula palette, so rg output matches fzf/kitty/etc:

--colors=path:fg:0xbd,0x93,0xf9     # purple paths
--colors=line:fg:0x50,0xfa,0x7b     # green line numbers
--colors=column:fg:0x50,0xfa,0x7b   # green column numbers
--colors=match:fg:0xff,0x55,0x55    # red match highlights

Verifying it’s loaded

rg foo --debug 2>&1 | head -5

The first line of debug output names the config file path being read.

brew install ripgrep-all provides rga, a wrapper that runs rg across non-text files by extracting their content first: PDFs, ebooks (EPUB, MOBI), Office docs, archives (zip, tar, 7z), and even SQLite databases:

rga "encryption" ~/Documents/papers   # grep across PDFs
rga "TODO" project.zip                # grep inside an archive without extracting

rga reads its own config dir (~/.config/ripgrep-all/) — it does not share this ripgrep/config file. Run rga --help to set up adapter-specific options.

Fresh-machine setup

brew install ripgrep ripgrep-all   # both in the Brewfile
stow ripgrep
# RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH is exported by zsh/.zshrc already

dotfiles