How to fuzzy search a git repository for content that once existed?

Question

I love fzf.vim for file content searching within vim. But how could I use that to search for content that was once in a git repository's files?

This stackoverflow question has basically two interesting answers, I would say, but they are for searching on the commandline:

Using pickaxe:

git log -SFoo -- path_containing_change
git log -SFoo --since=2009.1.1 --until=2010.1.1 -- path_containing_change

And using git grep:

git grep <regexp> $(git rev-list --all)
git grep <regexp> $(git rev-list <rev1>..<rev2>)

Fzf.vim suggests a GGrep command in its README, which just searches the currently checked in versions of all files (i.e. same as :Rg).

So I tried plugging the same git grep $(git rev-list) command into that:

command! -bang -nargs=* GGrep
  \ call fzf#vim#grep(
  \   'git grep --line-number -- '.shellescape(<q-args>).' $(git rev-list --all)', 0,
  \   fzf#vim#with_preview({'dir': systemlist('git rev-parse --show-toplevel')[0]}), <bang>0)

Although that search seems to work fine, when I press enter I would want it to open fugitive showing the commit of the file. Currently it opens a new empty buffer with a name such as a8b7d22ef54:some/file.txt, which is really not helpful. I wasn't able to find anything in fzf's documentation that shows how to customize the opening of the file.

The command I hacked together probably also doesn't work for large repositories, where I would want to search specifically from most recent commits through to older ones. I hope someone has a working configuration they will share for fuzzy searching git repositories.

My current workaround is to use the commandline, and then navigate to the commit specified in vim-flog, and then use fugitive's :Gedit [commit-hash]:[filepath].

Answer 1

Just came across another solution for fzf.vim which was introduced with this commit. It doesn't seem to be documented apart from this commit message:

[[B]Commits] Support arguments for git-log

Add support for command arguments that are passed to git-log (e.g.

:Commits -S foo -3).

It however can be used this way:

Commits
Commits!
Commits -S foo
Commits! -S foo

Answer 2

Just had the same question and couldn't find a solution with fzf.vim myself, but there seems to be a solution using search_log_content_file as part of the advanced-git-search.nvim plugin (which is however based on Telescope):

Advanced Git Search

Opens a Telescope window with a list of git commits that changed the current >file (renames included).

Grep behavior: filter on added, updated or removed code (log content: -G option in git).

It is invoked using:

:Telescope advanced_git_search search_log_content_file

which opens a fuzzy finder window in which you can search for content.

There is even a small demo here