GitHub: searching through older versions of files

Question

Currently, I don't believe it's possible to search within the complete history of a repository's code on the github website - the closest is just searching within the current code of a repository with the "code search" option on this page.

However, from the command line, you can find any commits that introduced or removed lines mentioning get_info with the -S option to git log. e.g.:

git log -Sget_info -p

(n.b. there should be no space between -S and the search term)

(also note: to search for more than one word, surround in '):

git log -S'get info' -p

So, at a minimum that should find the commit where the function was first introduced and the one that removed it. I added the -p so you can also see the patches - if lots of commits introduced changes that mentioned the function that may be helpful. If the function was only on another branch it might also be useful to use --all to search all branches.

Jefromi points out in a comment below that git 1.7.4 will introduce the -G option as an alternative - this change is summarized in a recent blog post from Junio Hamano (git maintainer): http://gitster.livejournal.com/48191.html

git log -G'your text' -p --all

Note the following from the docs;

[...] consider a commit with the following diff in the same file:

+    return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
-    hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);

While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of occurrences of that string did not change).

Kudos both Mark and Cascabel for pointing in the right direction