ripgrep-all is a command-line search tool that extends ripgrep to search inside compressed archives and document formats.
The tool solves the problem of searching text content that lives inside binary file formats and archives, which ripgrep cannot handle natively. It works by detecting file types, extracting or converting their text content on the fly, and piping that content to ripgrep for pattern matching. This approach lets you search PDFs, e-books, Office documents, zip files, tar archives, and similar formats using ripgrep's familiar syntax and performance characteristics without manually extracting files first.
You should adopt this tool if your workflow involves searching across mixed file types and you want to avoid the friction of manual extraction or format conversion. It suits projects where documentation, reports, or archived data need to be searchable as part of your regular grep workflow. The tool integrates directly with ripgrep, so if you already use ripgrep, the learning curve is minimal—you run rga instead of rg and get the same interface with expanded format support.
The project shows consistent maintenance with regular commits addressing bug fixes and format support improvements. Pull requests receive timely review and feedback from maintainers. The codebase demonstrates active problem-solving around edge cases in document parsing and archive handling. Issue discussions indicate the maintainers engage substantively with user reports and feature requests, working through implementation details rather than dismissing requests outright.
