nordisk/holger

Cross-repo search — for idiots

Class: guide (beginner) · Function: search. The five-minute version. The real reference is search-guide.md.

The problem

You have a bunch of repositories in Holger (a Rust one, a Maven one, a prod one…) and you want to know: where is serde? or which repo holds the jar with this exact checksum? You do not want to open each repo one at a time.

The fix

Search looks in all of them at once. One command, one answer.

holger-server search --config holger.ron --name serde

That prints every artifact called (or containing) "serde", in every repo, with the repo name in brackets:

search: 2 artifact hit(s), 0 path hit(s)
  [rust-dev] -/serde@1.0.1 (11 bytes)
  [rust-dev] -/serde@1.0.0 (11 bytes)

The dials

Add as many as you like — they stack (all must match):

• --name serde — the artifact name (case doesn't matter, partial is fine).
• --namespace org.example — the Maven group / npm scope.
• --version 1.0.0 — the exact version.
• --checksum <hex> — "find whatever has these bytes" (by sha256). Slower, because Holger has to read the files to check — only use it when you mean it.
• --path .jar — search the raw file paths inside archives.
• --repo rust-dev — only look in this repo (repeat for more).
• --limit 50 — stop after 50 hits.

No dials at all? You get a list of everything.

Not just the command line

The same search is also a gRPC call (SearchService.Search) and a plain web URL you can open in a browser or curl:

http://your-holger:PORT/-/search?name=serde

It answers with JSON. It is read-only — searching never changes anything.

Two things to remember

1. Searching is safe and read-only. It never deletes or edits an artifact.
2. If it says (truncated …), there were more hits than your --limit — raise it.