vscode-ripgrep

This is an npm module for using ripgrep in a Node project. It's used by VS Code.

How it works

• Ripgrep is built in microsoft/ripgrep-prebuilt and published as release assets for each tag.
• At publish time, the binaries for every supported platform are downloaded by build/prepare-binaries.js, verified against binaries.lock.json (SHA256), and placed under bin/<target>/rg[.exe]. They ship inside the npm tarball.
• At runtime, lib/index.js resolves rgPath from process.platform/process.arch to the correct bin/<target>/<binary>.
• There is no postinstall step and no runtime network access.

Usage example

const { rgPath } = require('@vscode/ripgrep');

// child_process.spawn(rgPath, ...)

Published packages

This monorepo publishes three kinds of npm packages:

• @vscode/ripgrep — the normal entry point. Pure JS wrapper; pulls in the per-platform binary package for the current platform via optionalDependencies. Use this for almost everything.
• @vscode/ripgrep-<os>-<cpu> — the per-platform binary packages (e.g. @vscode/ripgrep-linux-x64). Installed transitively by @vscode/ripgrep. Not meant to be depended on directly.
• @vscode/ripgrep-universal — a single tarball bundling every platform's binary. Use this when you need access to all platforms' binaries from one install — for example, when repackaging an app into cross-platform artifacts from one build host. Exports rgPath (current platform) and binPathFor({ os, arch }) (any platform). Tarball is large (~60 MB).

Updating ripgrep

1. Edit the VERSION (or MULTI_ARCH_VERSION) constant in lib/platforms.js.
2. Run npm run update-lock. This re-downloads every platform's archive and rewrites binaries.lock.json with the fresh SHA256 hashes.
3. Commit the updated lib/platforms.js and binaries.lock.json.

Building locally

• npm run prepare-binaries — downloads any missing binaries and verifies them against binaries.lock.json. Fails on hash mismatch.
• npm run prepare-binaries -- --force — forces a clean re-download (still verifies).
• npm run update-lock — refreshes binaries.lock.json after a version bump.

Set GITHUB_TOKEN to avoid GitHub's anonymous API rate limit during downloads.