Packages

Active contributors: Andrew Gallant

ripgrep is a Cargo workspace with one binary crate (ripgrep, the rg executable) and nine library crates under crates/. Most of ripgrep's logic is in those libraries; the binary is glue that parses flags and wires them together.

The library crates are also published independently to crates.io and have downstream users beyond ripgrep itself (e.g., globset is used by Cargo, ignore by build tools).

Workspace layout

Crate	Path	Purpose	Dedicated page
ripgrep	crates/core	The rg binary: CLI parsing, search drivers	core
grep	crates/grep	Re-export facade over the other crates	grep
grep-matcher	crates/matcher	Generic Matcher trait for regex implementations	matcher
grep-regex	crates/regex	Matcher impl backed by Rust's regex crate	regex
grep-pcre2	crates/pcre2	Matcher impl backed by PCRE2 (optional)	pcre2
grep-searcher	crates/searcher	Line-oriented search engine	searcher
grep-printer	crates/printer	Standard / JSON / Summary output formatters	printer
grep-cli	crates/cli	CLI utilities: stdin handling, decompression, pattern files	cli
ignore	crates/ignore	Recursive directory walker that respects ignore rules	ignore
globset	crates/globset	Single glob and glob-set matching	globset

Dependency layering

graph TD
    rg[ripgrep binary - crates/core] --> grep
    rg --> ignore
    grep --> grep_cli
    grep --> grep_matcher
    grep --> grep_pcre2
    grep --> grep_printer
    grep --> grep_regex
    grep --> grep_searcher
    grep_searcher --> grep_matcher
    grep_regex --> grep_matcher
    grep_pcre2 --> grep_matcher
    grep_printer --> grep_matcher
    grep_printer --> grep_searcher
    ignore --> globset

Lines flow from dependent to dependency. globset and grep-matcher are at the bottom; nothing in the workspace depends on crates/core other than the binary it produces.

Versioning

Each library crate has its own version number, separate from the ripgrep binary's version. Versions are bumped only when a release is cut for that specific crate. The #:version marker comment in Cargo.toml is what RELEASE-CHECKLIST.md greps for when bumping.

Latest tagged versions (as of writing):

• ripgrep 15.1.0
• grep 0.4.1
• grep-cli 0.1.12
• grep-matcher 0.1.8
• grep-pcre2 0.1.9
• grep-printer 0.3.1
• grep-regex 0.1.14
• grep-searcher 0.1.16
• globset 0.4.18
• ignore 0.4.25

Where to start

If you want to understand ripgrep top-down, read in this order:

1. core — what the rg binary does
2. matcher — the trait everyone implements or uses
3. searcher — the search engine
4. regex — the default matcher implementation
5. printer — the output formatters
6. ignore — directory walking and .gitignore rules
7. globset — what ignore uses for glob matching

The smaller crates (grep, cli, pcre2) can be read in any order.