[paule89]

The second post i read today about fzf. And also again i see ripgrep. I think it is time to make these tools a default in linux distros. Maybe a small you could use ripgrep instead of grep, just before the first use of these tools would be interesting.

[burntsushi]

Hope you don't mind some brief clarifications.

Work on adding ripgrep to Linux distros is being tracked here[1]. We've made good progress so far, but AFAIK it's still missing in Ubuntu and Debian. I'm not caught up with what's required to get ripgrep into those repos.

With respect to making it a literal default---as in replacing GNU grep---I don't really expect that to ever happen. There is a ton of intersection between the tools, right down to the names and functionality of flags, but there's also many subtle details in the differences. For example, normal grep invocations will use BREs by default, which have different escaping rules than EREs, where EREs are closer to what ripgrep uses. There's also the difference where ripgrep respects things like .gitignore and ignores hidden files by default, which means there's likely a non-zero number of shell scripts out there where swapping grep for ripgrep will break. Folks won't (and shouldn't) take too kindly to that. :-)

To a first approximation, ripgrep is optimized for end user experience in a terminal. This leads to different design decisions. Offering a compatibility mode with grep has been suggested, but is significant work.

[1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/10

[pja]

The most effective way into “official” Ubuntu is probably via Debian, although there's nothing stopping you from providing your own Ubuntu PPA.

If you want to get a ripgrep package into Debian then you’ll need to do the work to turn the sources into something that Debian can build automatically & find yourself a Debian developer who’ll act as a sponsor for your package and upload it to the Debian archive.

The Debian Mentors mailing list is probably a good place to start, although you could make a sponsor request directly via the bug tracking system if you wanted to:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq#How_do_I_get_a_spon...

[lloeki]

> Work on adding ripgrep to Linux distros is being tracked here[1]

There are multiple interpretations of the GP's comment, each one being a prerequisite of the next:

- ripgrep is available in the distro repos - ripgrep is included on the main install medium (first Debian CD, Arch net iso even?) - ripgrep is selected for inclusion on a default install (but grep is still there) - ripgrep replaces grep altogether

On first read I though we were talking about the third one.

> where swapping grep for ripgrep will break

> Offering a compatibility mode with grep has been suggested, but is significant work.

Do you mean by that, that 'rg' could change its defaults and behave like 'grep' when being invoked as 'grep' (through symlink or hardlink), similarly to bash/sh or vi/vim?

[burntsushi]

I agree with the multiple possible interpretations. I conservatively chose the most controversial one and responded to that, which should cover all of them. :-)

RE compatibility: yes, something like that. But "change its defaults" is the easy part. I said more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15430770

[kaushalmodi]

Have you set up a Hackernews/Reddit crawler that pings you each time someone mentions "ripgrep"? Seriously, I'd be interested in knowing what solution you use.

[burntsushi]

I just saw it on the front page, which I check embarrassingly frequently. :-) (But I do have a Google Alert setup for it, sure.)

[steveklabnik]

HN Search, at the bottom of the page, is very useful for keeping tabs on discussions of topics you care about.