How to install Git with PCRE support on macOS with Homebrew?

Question

When I run

$ git grep -P "<pattern>"

I get the following error:

fatal: cannot use Perl-compatible regexes when not compiled with USE_LIBPCRE

How can I install Git with PCRE support for macOS properly?

Answer 1

With homebrew, just use

brew reinstall --with-pcre2 git

It forces to build git from source instead of downloading the bottle, but ensures that the updates will be done with the pcre support.

Answer 2

Homebrew ships Git with a pre-built version (bottle) by default. You need to compile Git from source to enable PCRE support:

$ brew install pcre
$ export USE_LIBPCRE=yes
$ brew reinstall --build-from-source git

Now it should work as expected.