Broken SearchText tool when RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH is set due to bundled ripgrep v13.0.0

[nicolasff]

What happened?

Bug: SearchText tool can fail when $RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH is set

gemini's SearchText tool consistently fails on my machine, due to my terminal having $RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH set and pointing to a file containing the following:

--threads=4

When SearchText is triggered from a regular prompt (e.g. "where in this codebase can I find …"), it invokes rg (ripgrep), which fails with the following error:

✓  SearchText 'chapter' within ./

Error: ripgrep exited with code 2: error: The argument '--threads <NUM>' requires 1 values, but 2 were provided

USAGE:

    rg [OPTIONS] PATTERN [PATH ...]
    rg [OPTIONS] -e PATTERN ... [PATH ...]
    rg [OPTIONS] -f PATTERNFILE ... [PATH ...]
    rg [OPTIONS] --files [PATH ...]
    rg [OPTIONS] --type-list
    command | rg [OPTIONS] PATTERN
    rg [OPTIONS] --help
    rg [OPTIONS] --version

For more information try --help

Explanation

gemini passes a number of arguments to rg, including --threads 4 just before the path to search: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/57c7b9ccced5df56e9cc1673a4e6c98bb3c82271/packages/core/src/tools/ripGrep.ts#L392-L393

If set, rg itself will read the file at $RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH and combine its contents with the CLI args, which leads to both --threads=4 and --threads 4 being part of rg's execution parameters.

With the bundled binary ~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg at version 13.0.0, this combination leads to rg failing with the error shown above.

Steps to reproduce

Create a ripgrep config file (e.g., ~/.ripgreprc) containing the following:

--threads=4

Export the environment variable:

export RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH=~/.ripgreprc

Run gemini in any repo, and ask it to search for some text.

Manual repro

The failure can also be reproduced manually:

~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg --regexp search-term --threads=4 --threads 4 ./

What did you expect to happen?

I expected SearchTool to be able to use rg without issues and find the text I was asking for.

Client information

Client Information: v0.20.2

Run gemini to enter the interactive CLI, then run the /about command.

> /about
CLI Version    0.20.2
Git Commit     af894e468
Model          auto
Sandbox        no sandbox
OS             darwin
Auth Method    OAuth

I've observed the same behavior on the most recent nightly, v0.21.0-nightly.20251213.977248e09.

Login information

No response

Anything else we need to know?

No other reports

I searched for issues mentioning RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH, but none existed before this one.

Working version

I have rg installed on my system via Homebrew, at version 15.1.0. It does not reproduce this issue, and performs the search as expected.

Workaround

If you have a version of rg more recent than 13.0.0, you can replace ~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg with your copy:

mv ~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg ~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg.orig
cp $(which rg) ~/.gemini/tmp/bin/rg

Suggested fix

I would suggest using a more recent version of ripgrep. From what I can tell, the repo for the rg binary and its version are configured here: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/57c7b9ccced5df56e9cc1673a4e6c98bb3c82271/third_party/get-ripgrep/src/downloadRipGrep.js#L24-L25

That repo published a release with rg binaries for version 15.0.0 on October 21.