feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Noel Grandin]

Hi

In our repo (LibreOffice) we have various test files which tend to show up on 'grit grep',
which just generate noise because
(a) they have lots of common keywords that one might search for in them
and
(b) they have very little in the way of linebreaks

So they tend to generate a lot of noise when searching.

What would be nice is a per-user/repo config setting that excludes certain files and paths from the 'git grep' search.

Does this sound reasonable/acceptable?

Thanks, Noel Grandin

Disclaimer: http://www.peralex.com/disclaimer.html

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Duy Nguyen]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 7:23 PM, Noel Grandin <noel@peralex.com> wrote:
> What would be nice is a per-user/repo config setting that excludes certain
> files and paths from the 'git grep' search.
>
> Does this sound reasonable/acceptable?

There is no config setting to do that, but since v1.9.5 you can use
':!' or ':(exclude) to exclude paths, for example

git grep foo -- '*.c' ':!src/ ':!*foo*.c'

will exclude .c files in src directory or contains "foo". If you use
some exclude patterns often, you can write a short script. Perhaps we
could support pathspec macros (similar to git-attr macros), stored in
config file. You still need to type, but it'll be a lot shorter.
-- 
Duy

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 08:46:37PM +0700, Duy Nguyen wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 7:23 PM, Noel Grandin <noel@peralex.com> wrote:
> > What would be nice is a per-user/repo config setting that excludes certain
> > files and paths from the 'git grep' search.
> >
> > Does this sound reasonable/acceptable?
> 
> There is no config setting to do that, but since v1.9.5 you can use
> ':!' or ':(exclude) to exclude paths, for example
> 
> git grep foo -- '*.c' ':!src/ ':!*foo*.c'
> 
> will exclude .c files in src directory or contains "foo". If you use
> some exclude patterns often, you can write a short script. Perhaps we
> could support pathspec macros (similar to git-attr macros), stored in
> config file. You still need to type, but it'll be a lot shorter.

If it's an attribute of the file, and not the request, maybe
gitattributes would be a better fit. You can already do this with:

  *.foo -diff

in your .gitattributes file, though that _also_ marks the files as "not
for diffing", which may not be desired. There's not a separate "grep"
attribute, but I do not think it would be unreasonable to add one.

-Peff

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> If it's an attribute of the file, and not the request, maybe
> gitattributes would be a better fit. You can already do this with:
>
>   *.foo -diff
>
> in your .gitattributes file, though that _also_ marks the files as "not
> for diffing", which may not be desired. There's not a separate "grep"
> attribute, but I do not think it would be unreasonable to add one.

I have a vague recollection of having a discussion that started with
something like this:

    "diff" is named as if it is only for "diff" for historical
    reasons, but it is about "do we want to treat its raw contents
    as text?"

I do not recall its conclusion, but it it were "Yes, that is what it
means", then it might be reasonable to:

 - have "git grep" ignore paths marked with -diff by default
   (perhaps "-a" option to disable, just like GNU)

 - have "git grep" pay attention to diff.textconv and search in the
   result of textconv filter.


 

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 10:33:53AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > If it's an attribute of the file, and not the request, maybe
> > gitattributes would be a better fit. You can already do this with:
> >
> >   *.foo -diff
> >
> > in your .gitattributes file, though that _also_ marks the files as "not
> > for diffing", which may not be desired. There's not a separate "grep"
> > attribute, but I do not think it would be unreasonable to add one.
> 
> I have a vague recollection of having a discussion that started with
> something like this:
> 
>     "diff" is named as if it is only for "diff" for historical
>     reasons, but it is about "do we want to treat its raw contents
>     as text?"

Yes, I think we had this discussion, and agreed that is a reasonable
definition...

> I do not recall its conclusion, but it it were "Yes, that is what it
> means", then it might be reasonable to:
> 
>  - have "git grep" ignore paths marked with -diff by default
>    (perhaps "-a" option to disable, just like GNU)

...which led to 41b59bf (grep: respect diff attributes for binary-ness,
2012-02-02)...

>  - have "git grep" pay attention to diff.textconv and search in the
>    result of textconv filter.

..and 335ec3b (grep: allow to use textconv filters, 2013-05-10).

So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
there is no code to be written. But if somebody wants to draw a
distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).

-Peff

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
> there is no code to be written.  But if somebody wants to draw a
> distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
> them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
> fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).

That is all true.

If we were to have a new 'grep' attribute that can be used to
express 'It is OK to diff two versions of this path, but hits by
grep in this path is useless' (and verse versa), the built-in macro
attribute 'binary' should also be updated with it.  A path being
'binary' currently means '-diff -merge -text' but it should also
mean '-grep' in the new world, if we were to go in that direction.

Thanks.

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 11:01:22AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
> > there is no code to be written.  But if somebody wants to draw a
> > distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
> > them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
> > fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).
> 
> That is all true.
> 
> If we were to have a new 'grep' attribute that can be used to
> express 'It is OK to diff two versions of this path, but hits by
> grep in this path is useless' (and verse versa), the built-in macro
> attribute 'binary' should also be updated with it.  A path being
> 'binary' currently means '-diff -merge -text' but it should also
> mean '-grep' in the new world, if we were to go in that direction.

I think it would do so automatically. There is no "grep" attribute
given, so we fall back to the "-diff" attribute. But I do not mind
modifying the macro to be more explicit.

Note also that I am not volunteering to work on this, nor am I convinced
it's actually worth pursuing. I've yet to see a useful case where you
would want text diffs but not greps (or vice versa), and if we can avoid
cluttering the attribute space, we should. I was mostly pointing it out
that it is not logically inconsistent to want such a thing. :)

If somebody does look into it, I suspect the place to start is modifying
userdiff_find_by_path to optionally prefer "grep" to "diff".

-Peff

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Michael J Gruber]

Jeff King venit, vidit, dixit 25.02.2015 20:11:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 11:01:22AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
>> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>>
>>> So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
>>> there is no code to be written.  But if somebody wants to draw a
>>> distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
>>> them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
>>> fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).
>>
>> That is all true.
>>
>> If we were to have a new 'grep' attribute that can be used to
>> express 'It is OK to diff two versions of this path, but hits by
>> grep in this path is useless' (and verse versa), the built-in macro
>> attribute 'binary' should also be updated with it.  A path being
>> 'binary' currently means '-diff -merge -text' but it should also
>> mean '-grep' in the new world, if we were to go in that direction.
> 
> I think it would do so automatically. There is no "grep" attribute
> given, so we fall back to the "-diff" attribute. But I do not mind
> modifying the macro to be more explicit.
> 
> Note also that I am not volunteering to work on this, nor am I convinced
> it's actually worth pursuing. I've yet to see a useful case where you
> would want text diffs but not greps (or vice versa), and if we can avoid
> cluttering the attribute space, we should. I was mostly pointing it out
> that it is not logically inconsistent to want such a thing. :)
> 
> If somebody does look into it, I suspect the place to start is modifying
> userdiff_find_by_path to optionally prefer "grep" to "diff".
> 
> -Peff
> 

So, as a summary of the discussion, it seems it's time to switch the
default to --textconv for git grep?

Michael

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Duy Nguyen]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Michael J Gruber
<git@drmicha.warpmail.net> wrote:
> So, as a summary of the discussion, it seems it's time to switch the
> default to --textconv for git grep?

Either that or make it clearer in git-grep.txt about this diff
attribute. It takes me some time to make the connection after reading
both git-grep.txt and gitattributes.txt
-- 
Duy

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:

> So, as a summary of the discussion, it seems it's time to switch the
> default to --textconv for git grep?

Hmmm, why?

Nobody seems to be asking for such a change in this thread.  The
original issue IIRC was that the grep output was unnecessary for
some paths and the repository did not mark these paths as such.
Once they are marked as "-diff", there is no reason why you want to
trigger textconv to squelch the hits from grep.

So that does not sound to me a summary of the discussion at all.

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Trevor Saunders]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 02:11:08PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 11:01:22AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> > Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> > 
> > > So I think _if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for this purpose, then
> > > there is no code to be written.  But if somebody wants to draw a
> > > distinction between the uses (I want to diff "foo" files, but never see
> > > them in grep) then we could introduce a "grep" attribute (with the
> > > fallback being the value of the "diff" attribute for that path).
> > 
> > That is all true.
> > 
> > If we were to have a new 'grep' attribute that can be used to
> > express 'It is OK to diff two versions of this path, but hits by
> > grep in this path is useless' (and verse versa), the built-in macro
> > attribute 'binary' should also be updated with it.  A path being
> > 'binary' currently means '-diff -merge -text' but it should also
> > mean '-grep' in the new world, if we were to go in that direction.
> 
> I think it would do so automatically. There is no "grep" attribute
> given, so we fall back to the "-diff" attribute. But I do not mind
> modifying the macro to be more explicit.
> 
> Note also that I am not volunteering to work on this, nor am I convinced
> it's actually worth pursuing. I've yet to see a useful case where you
> would want text diffs but not greps (or vice versa), and if we can avoid
> cluttering the attribute space, we should. I was mostly pointing it out
> that it is not logically inconsistent to want such a thing. :)

 There have been cases where I wanted grep to always ignore certain
 files, but to still get text diffs for those files.  One case is people
 insist on using ChangeLog files, and another is people who commit
 generated files of one sort or another.

 Trev

> 
> If somebody does look into it, I suspect the place to start is modifying
> userdiff_find_by_path to optionally prefer "grep" to "diff".
> 
> -Peff
> --
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Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Michael J Gruber]

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 26.02.2015 21:59:
> Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:
> 
>> So, as a summary of the discussion, it seems it's time to switch the
>> default to --textconv for git grep?
> 
> Hmmm, why?
> 
> Nobody seems to be asking for such a change in this thread.  The
> original issue IIRC was that the grep output was unnecessary for
> some paths and the repository did not mark these paths as such.
> Once they are marked as "-diff", there is no reason why you want to
> trigger textconv to squelch the hits from grep.

Of course not. All that I want, and that I wanted back then, was to have
diff and grep behave the same.

> So that does not sound to me a summary of the discussion at all.
> 

Well, your conditional

> I do not recall its conclusion, but it it were "Yes, that is what it
> means", then it might be reasonable to:
> 
>  - have "git grep" ignore paths marked with -diff by default
>    (perhaps "-a" option to disable, just like GNU)
> 
>  - have "git grep" pay attention to diff.textconv and search in the
>    result of textconv filter.

and Jeff's "Yes" on that condition certainly read like that to me: Make
"git grep" react to "diff", "-diff" attributes in the same way as "git
diff".

But I've set up my alias greppp since then and don't care any more, and
I won't invest anything in this topic any more.

Michael

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:

> Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 26.02.2015 21:59:
>
>> So that does not sound to me a summary of the discussion at all.
>
> Well, your conditional
>
>> I do not recall its conclusion, but it it were "Yes, that is what it
>> means", then it might be reasonable to:
>> 
>>  - have "git grep" ignore paths marked with -diff by default
>>    (perhaps "-a" option to disable, just like GNU)
>> 
>>  - have "git grep" pay attention to diff.textconv and search in the
>>    result of textconv filter.
>
> and Jeff's "Yes" on that condition certainly read like that to me: Make
> "git grep" react to "diff", "-diff" attributes in the same way as "git
> diff".

Ah, OK, I missed that flow of thought.

I read the conclusion as "_if_ using "diff" attributes is enough for
this purpose, then there is no code to be written ... but 'grep' and
'diff' may want to be different."

Once we know if they do *not* want to be different, I agree that it
may make things more consistent to turn --textconv on for binary
files when running grep.

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Trevor Saunders <tbsaunde@tbsaunde.org> writes:

>  There have been cases where I wanted grep to always ignore certain
>  files, but to still get text diffs for those files.  One case is people
>  insist on using ChangeLog files, and another is people who commit
>  generated files of one sort or another.

The attributes are to say "the contents to be stored in this file is
of this nature".  Something inherent to the type of the contents,
and that is why there is no way to countermand them from the command
line.

The "nature of the content" may be "result of comparing two versions
of them textually will never make sense to humans", or "result of
finding substrings in them will never make sense to humans", which
are what "-diff" and hypothetical "-grep" mean, respectively.

"It is inconvenient that I see hits in ChangeLog files when I look
for string BUG" does not make ChangeLog inherently "result of
finding substrings in it never makes sense to humans"-kind of file
type.  Maybe somebody who is playing a role of a coder right now may
not look at existing ChangeLog entries, but when that same person
plays the role of a release manager next day, running grep on older
ChangeLog files may become necessary to find changes related to
recent changes.  For these "per-invocation" differences, attributes
to declare permenent/inherent nature of the contents is much less
suited than per-invocation inclusion/exclusion mechanism based on
pathspecs, I would think.

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Trevor Saunders]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 07:06:16PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Trevor Saunders <tbsaunde@tbsaunde.org> writes:
> 
> >  There have been cases where I wanted grep to always ignore certain
> >  files, but to still get text diffs for those files.  One case is people
> >  insist on using ChangeLog files, and another is people who commit
> >  generated files of one sort or another.
> 
> The attributes are to say "the contents to be stored in this file is
> of this nature".  Something inherent to the type of the contents,
> and that is why there is no way to countermand them from the command
> line.
> 
> The "nature of the content" may be "result of comparing two versions
> of them textually will never make sense to humans", or "result of
> finding substrings in them will never make sense to humans", which
> are what "-diff" and hypothetical "-grep" mean, respectively.
> 
> "It is inconvenient that I see hits in ChangeLog files when I look
> for string BUG" does not make ChangeLog inherently "result of
> finding substrings in it never makes sense to humans"-kind of file
> type.  Maybe somebody who is playing a role of a coder right now may
> not look at existing ChangeLog entries, but when that same person
> plays the role of a release manager next day, running grep on older
> ChangeLog files may become necessary to find changes related to
> recent changes.  For these "per-invocation" differences, attributes
> to declare permenent/inherent nature of the contents is much less
> suited than per-invocation inclusion/exclusion mechanism based on
> pathspecs, I would think.

I think that makes some amount of sense, however typing stuff like
--exclude=ChangeLog all the time is not terribly easy on the hands.
Would it make sense to instead add a config variable grep.exclude?

Trev

> 
> 

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Trevor Saunders <tbsaunde@tbsaunde.org> writes:

>> ...  For these "per-invocation" differences, attributes
>> to declare permenent/inherent nature of the contents is much less
>> suited than per-invocation inclusion/exclusion mechanism based on
>> pathspecs, I would think.
>
> I think that makes some amount of sense, however typing stuff like
> --exclude=ChangeLog all the time is not terribly easy on the hands.
> Would it make sense to instead add a config variable grep.exclude?

I do not think it makes much more sense for at least three reasons.
for one thing, It still goes against "per-invocation" nature of what
is being done.  Your "for this invocation I do not want ChangeLog"
does not have to be limited to 'grep'.  And also "I end up having to
give these pathspecs all the time" is not limited to negative ones.

We have magic pathspecs, like "This pattern is used to match the
string case-insensitively", "This pattern specifies that the path
should *not* match it", etc.  How about adding a new feature that
lets you say "This is a short hand to giving these pathspecs" and
call that "pathspec macro"?

If you get tired to keep having to type

    $ git log -- Documentation/ ':!Documentation/technical/'

every time you want to check the end-user facing documentation
pages, you could for example say (I am using a made-up 'macro'
pathspec magic that is introduced by ':*' followed by a <macro
name>):

    $ git log -- ':*userdoc'

and the same macro specification could be used for all the other
things that take pathspecs (grep, add, diff, etc.).

You could then have something like this to define your own "nolog"
macro:

    [pathspecMacro]
        nolog = ':!ChangeLog' ':!ChangeLog.*'

to shorten your invocation of "grep" by appending it when you want
to exclude some files, i.e.

    $ git grep -e pattern -- \*.c ':*nolog'

and the same pathspec macro can be used in other places, not just
"grep".  Wouldn't it make more sense?

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Trevor Saunders]

On Sun, Mar 01, 2015 at 03:22:11PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Trevor Saunders <tbsaunde@tbsaunde.org> writes:
> 
> >> ...  For these "per-invocation" differences, attributes
> >> to declare permenent/inherent nature of the contents is much less
> >> suited than per-invocation inclusion/exclusion mechanism based on
> >> pathspecs, I would think.
> >
> > I think that makes some amount of sense, however typing stuff like
> > --exclude=ChangeLog all the time is not terribly easy on the hands.
> > Would it make sense to instead add a config variable grep.exclude?
> 
> I do not think it makes much more sense for at least three reasons.
> for one thing, It still goes against "per-invocation" nature of what
> is being done.  Your "for this invocation I do not want ChangeLog"
> does not have to be limited to 'grep'.  And also "I end up having to
> give these pathspecs all the time" is not limited to negative ones.

I think what is somewhat special about grep is that I want to ignore a
set of paths such a large majority of the time that I really want to
change the default.  I could see someone wanting to do the same thing
for diff or log maybe, and so adding diff.exclude, but personally I
don't have a use for it.

> We have magic pathspecs, like "This pattern is used to match the
> string case-insensitively", "This pattern specifies that the path
> should *not* match it", etc.  How about adding a new feature that
> lets you say "This is a short hand to giving these pathspecs" and
> call that "pathspec macro"?
> 
> If you get tired to keep having to type
> 
>     $ git log -- Documentation/ ':!Documentation/technical/'
> 
> every time you want to check the end-user facing documentation
> pages, you could for example say (I am using a made-up 'macro'
> pathspec magic that is introduced by ':*' followed by a <macro
> name>):
> 
>     $ git log -- ':*userdoc'
> 
> and the same macro specification could be used for all the other
> things that take pathspecs (grep, add, diff, etc.).

I can certainly see use cases for that, say
git log -- :!t/ :!foo/tests/ :!bar/testsuite/
to see what non test changes have happened in a project that doesn't
have a standardized name for test directories.

> You could then have something like this to define your own "nolog"
> macro:
> 
>     [pathspecMacro]
>         nolog = ':!ChangeLog' ':!ChangeLog.*'
> 
> to shorten your invocation of "grep" by appending it when you want
> to exclude some files, i.e.
> 
>     $ git grep -e pattern -- \*.c ':*nolog'
> 
> and the same pathspec macro can be used in other places, not just
> "grep".  Wouldn't it make more sense?

I think they solve somewhat different problems, but maybe my problem is
so specialized I should just have a wrapper around grep that changes
defaults.

Trev

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Noel Grandin]

On 2015-03-02 02:50 PM, Trevor Saunders wrote:
> I think they solve somewhat different problems, but maybe my problem is so specialized I should just have a wrapper 
> around grep that changes defaults. Trev 

I'm with Trevor on this one. While I see the appeal of the generality of a macro solution, this is really just about 
convenience for me on a per-project basis.

As in, while working on a specific project, I sometimes just want to exclude, for the time being, a bunch of stuff from 
'git grep'.

Mind you, I use 'git grep' a hang of a lot during development, since it is so powerful, so maybe that's just me.

Thanks, Noel Grandin



Disclaimer: http://www.peralex.com/disclaimer.html

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Noel Grandin <noel@peralex.com> writes:

> On 2015-03-02 02:50 PM, Trevor Saunders wrote:
>> I think they solve somewhat different problems, but maybe my problem
>> is so specialized I should just have a wrapper around grep that
>> changes defaults. Trev 
>
> I'm with Trevor on this one. While I see the appeal of the generality
> of a macro solution, this is really just about convenience for me on a
> per-project basis.
>
> As in, while working on a specific project, I sometimes just want to
> exclude, for the time being, a bunch of stuff from 'git grep'.

The key word here is "for the time being", though.  What would you
do once you are done with the "for the time being" activity?  "git
config --unset"?

If you forget to do so when the "for the time being" activity ends,
and then you try to run 'git grep' and see that you did not get
expected hits from hierarchies that you set to exclude earlier, you
either (1) get misled to a wrong decison based on that false
non-hit, or (2) start scratching your head, wasting time trying to
figure out why 'git grep' is not hitting, no?

I expect the answer might be "No, I won't forget; I am very well
organized and you do not have to worry for me".  But a feature is an
invitation for people other than yourself, so...

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 12:56:10PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > As in, while working on a specific project, I sometimes just want to
> > exclude, for the time being, a bunch of stuff from 'git grep'.
> 
> The key word here is "for the time being", though.  What would you
> do once you are done with the "for the time being" activity?  "git
> config --unset"?

IMHO this is being too paternalistic. You can already shoot yourself
in the foot by configuring an alias to grep, running your alias, and
wondering why it does not produce the results you wanted.

But I'd also oppose a `grep.pathspecs` config option for a similar
reason: you can already accomplish the same thing (and more) with an
alias.

-Peff

PS One annoying thing about aliases is that you cannot re-alias an
   existing command, and git has already taken all of the good, easy
   names that we have trained our fingers for. :)

   Of course re-aliasing git-grep is another recipe for head-scratching
   (and broken scripts), but I am not sure there aren't a host of other
   ways to do a similar thing (basically any configuration option has
   the capacity to produce unexpected results if you forget that it is
   set).

   I dunno. Probably I am a bad person for dredging up that ancient
   argument again.

Re: feature request: excluding files/paths from "git grep"

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 12:56:10PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> > As in, while working on a specific project, I sometimes just want to
>> > exclude, for the time being, a bunch of stuff from 'git grep'.
>> 
>> The key word here is "for the time being", though.  What would you
>> do once you are done with the "for the time being" activity?  "git
>> config --unset"?
>
> IMHO this is being too paternalistic. You can already shoot yourself
> in the foot by configuring an alias to grep, running your alias, and
> wondering why it does not produce the results you wanted.

Yeah, as I said, it is a deliberately paternalistic stance.  But at
least when I say "git mygrep" using the alias mechanism and get a
result that is different from what I expect from "git grep", I would
know I am doing something different with "mygrep" from "grep", no?

And a great thing about that "use alias" approach is that we can
sidestep the entire "then what should I do when I have to override
the configured thing for one-shot invocation?" question, as there is
an obvious simple answer "don't use that alias but use the
underlying command".