Getting started

This page covers what you need to build, run, and test ripgrep from a fresh checkout. For end-user installation (Homebrew, apt, etc.) see the project README.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.85.0 or newer (declared by rust-version = "1.85" in Cargo.toml). Install via rustup.
• A C compiler, only needed if you build with the optional pcre2 feature and the system has no pkg-config-discoverable PCRE2.
• musl toolchain, only needed if you want a fully static Linux binary (rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl).

Build the binary

From the repository root:

cargo build --release
./target/release/rg --version

Optional PCRE2 support:

cargo build --release --features pcre2
./target/release/rg -P 'lookahead(?=here)' file.txt

ripgrep's [profile.release] in Cargo.toml keeps debug = 1 so backtraces are useful. There is also a release-lto profile with full LTO that the official release artifacts use.

Build a Debian package

The package.metadata.deb section in Cargo.toml defines Debian packaging. The ci/build-deb script (referenced from the README) runs cargo deb with the pcre2 feature enabled. The .deb profile inherits from release-lto.

Run tests

ripgrep has both unit tests inside each crate and an integration test suite that drives the compiled rg binary.

cargo test --all

The integration tests live under tests/ and are wired through tests/tests.rs:

File	Purpose
tests/feature.rs	End-to-end coverage of CLI features (most flag combinations)
tests/regression.rs	Regression tests captured from past bug reports
tests/json.rs	The --json output format
tests/multiline.rs	The -U/--multiline mode
tests/binary.rs	Binary file detection and handling
tests/misc.rs	Catch-all for tests that don't fit elsewhere
tests/util.rs	Test harness: builds rg commands, captures output, compares results

The tests/data/ directory holds canned haystacks used by these tests. See Testing for more.

Run linters

ripgrep uses rustfmt (config in rustfmt.toml) and clippy for code quality.

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --all

CI also builds with the pcre2 feature and runs against the MSRV. The full CI matrix is in .github/workflows/ci.yml.

Run ripgrep against the repository itself

./target/release/rg 'fn main' --type rust
./target/release/rg --files --type-list      # inspect built-in file types
./target/release/rg -uuu 'TODO'              # disable all default filtering

Generating man page and shell completions

The rg binary itself can produce its man page and shell completion scripts:

./target/release/rg --generate man           > rg.1
./target/release/rg --generate complete-bash > rg.bash
./target/release/rg --generate complete-zsh  > _rg
./target/release/rg --generate complete-fish > rg.fish
./target/release/rg --generate complete-powershell > _rg.ps1

The implementations live under crates/core/flags/doc/ and crates/core/flags/complete/.

Where to go next

• How to contribute
• Patterns and conventions
• Architecture