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

• -C, --directory <path>: The root directory to start searching for Git repositories. Defaults to the current working directory (.).
• --exclude-dir <path>: Exclude a specific directory and all of its subdirectories from the search. This option can be provided multiple times.
• -p, --parallel: Execute the command in parallel using threads.
• -i, --if-exec <command>: Execute the main command only if this check command returns an exit code of 0.
• -j, --jobs <int>: The maximum number of concurrent workers/processors to use for parallel execution. Defaults to the number of CPU cores available.
• -s, --include-sub-repos: Include sub-repositories (e.g., Git worktrees and submodules) in the search target list.
• -h, --help: Show the help message and exit.
• -q, --quiet: Quiet mode. Suppresses the informational tracking headers ([EXEC] and [EXEC-P]) that prefix execution output. In sequential mode, it hides the [EXEC] repository delimiter line entirely; in parallel mode (-p), it strips the yellow [EXEC-P] header track and removes the four-space indentation, printing only the raw, unindented stdout and stderr streams. This flag has no effect when no execution command is supplied, allowing discovered repository paths to print normally.

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