It is hard to explain, when JetBrains implements so many deep features (e.g. actually debugging a Jupyter notebook), that they can't implement a filter to search only those files managed by git the way that "git grep" does.

As a die-hard fan of all things JetBrains and an "all products pack" subscriber for a number of years now, I am still unlikely to switch. Performance, deep functionality, productivity, and uniformity of experience matter.

And I have gradually moved more of my interaction with git from the command line into JetBrains in order to "keep in the flow". They conveniently give me "rebase this branch onto that branch" that just does the right thing and lots of ways to view local and git history that are worth getting good at. I don't imagine "stgit" will ever be mainstreamed though that would be delicious. :-)

So why the inability to let me filter searches to only managed files?

Take a look at the file browser tab or the file tabs. They have colors to distinguish managed, modified, or unmanaged files. So they know the status. And they annoyingly ask me every time in every new project when I create a file whether I want to add it to git, until I say "don't bother me again in this project", and I can return to my flow.

For details, see the support issue referenced, but all derived code, documentation, and generated indices result in garbage matches that you have to work to exclude by excluding directories, file types, or other hacks. And you will have to do this over and again with every one of your dozens of repos.

So for now, I have to drop out of the IDE for whatever language I am in and use the command line to run "git grep pattern.of.interest > t". And of course this adds more noise in future searches because you haven't told JetBrains to exclude the temporary file "t" (or wherever you put the output) from searching in this project...

Fellow devs, is it time to /. this issue?

See you down the road.