git-rexec: Find Git Repositories and Execute Commands Against Them, either Sequentially or in Parallel

The git-rexec command-line tool recursively locates Git repositories within a directory and executes commands against them, either sequentially or in parallel.

Here are examples demonstrating how to use git-rexec:

• Execute git status -s across all discovered Git repositories (found by searching recursively under the current working directory) in parallel (-p or --parallel):

  git-rexec -p -- git status -s
  

• Fetch updates across all discovered repositories, limiting the concurrency to 5 background jobs (-j 5), which helps avoid network congestion or server rate limits when communicating with upstream Git remotes:

  git-rexec -j 5 --parallel -- git fetch
  

• Include sub-repositories (e.g., Git worktrees and submodules) alongside standard Git repositories during discovery (-s or --include-sub-repos), and execute git status against them:

  git-rexec -s -p -- git status
  

• Target a specific base directory (~/projects) using the -C flag to recursively discover repositories within it, while explicitly excluding a specific subfolder (~/projects/archive). This example executes git status -s in parallel for all discovered repositories except those within the excluded path:

  git-rexec -C ~/projects --exclude-dir ~/projects/archive --parallel -- git status -s
  

• Evaluate whether a README.md file exists in the repository (sh -c "test -f README.md"). If the condition returns an exit status of 0 (success), it counts the number of lines in that file (wc -l README.md):

  git-rexec --if-exec 'sh -c "test -f README.md"' --parallel -- wc -l README.md
  

• Print the paths of all discovered Git repositories:

  git-rexec --print
  

If this helps your workflow, please support the project by ⭐ starring git-rexec on GitHub and sharing it on your website, blog, Mastodon, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, or other social media platforms to help more Git users discover its benefits.

Features

• Recursively discover Git repositories starting from a specified root directory.
• Optional flag to include sub-repositories (e.g., Git worktrees and submodules) in the execution target list.
• Execute shell commands across multiple repositories in parallel using worker threads.
• Filter target repositories based on the exit code of a conditional check (--if-exec).
• Exclude specific directories from the search path.
• Export discovered repository paths for integration with other shell tools (using --print or --print0).

Installation

Method 1: Manual Installation (System-wide)

Download the git-rexec script, make it executable, and copy it to a directory in your system PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin):

sudo cp git-rexec /usr/local/bin/

Method 2: Installation via pip

Install the package directly from the Git repository using pip:

pip install --user git-rexec

Dependencies

System Dependencies

• git: Required for repository validation and execution.

Python Dependencies (Optional)

• colorama: Provides color-coded terminal output.
• setproctitle: Sets the process title for process monitoring tools.

You can install the optional Python dependencies via pip:

pip install colorama setproctitle

Usage

git-rexec [OPTIONS] -- [exec_cmd ...]

(Assuming the git-rexec script is executable and in your PATH.)

Positional Arguments

• exec_cmd: The shell command to execute within each discovered Git repository. You can use -- to pass options directly to the command. If omitted, the script simply prints the paths of the discovered repositories.

Options

usage: git-rexec [-h] [-C DIRECTORY] [--exclude-dir EXCLUDE_DIR] [-p] [-i IF_EXEC] [-j MAX_WORKERS] [-q] [-s] [--print] [--print0] [exec_cmd ...]

Find Git repositories and execute commands against them in parallel.

positional arguments:
  exec_cmd              The command to execute. You can use -- to pass options.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -C, --directory DIRECTORY
                        Root directory to search (defaults to current directory)
  --exclude-dir EXCLUDE_DIR
                        Exclude a specific directory and all of its subdirectories
  -p, --parallel        Execute the command in parallel using threads
  -i, --if-exec IF_EXEC
                        Execute commands only if this check returns exit code 0.
  -j, --jobs MAX_WORKERS
                        Maximum number of processors/workers to use
  -q, --quiet           Quiet mode. Suppresses the informational log prefixes ([EXEC] and [EXEC-P]) that precede execution output.
  -s, --include-sub-repos
                        Include sub-repositories (e.g., Git worktrees and submodules)
  --print               Print the paths (only when no command is provided)
  --print0              Separate the paths with a null character (only when no command is provided)

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Copyright (C) 2019-2026 James Cherti.

Links

• git-rexec @GitHub