git_grep.py

# To run this script first install the 'gitpython' package from pip.
# $ pip install gitpython
#
# Usage:
# python git_grep.py repo_path filename regex
#

import os
import sys
import subprocess
import time
from git import Repo

def search(file_path, regex):
    try:
        start = time.time()
        result = subprocess.check_output(['grep', regex, file_path])
        total_time = time.time() - start
    except subprocess.CalledProcessError:
        return None
    return total_time

if __name__ == '__main__':
    _, repo_url, filename, regex = sys.argv
    repo = Repo(repo_url)
    file_path = os.path.join(repo_url, filename)
    total_time = 0
    for commit in repo.iter_commits('master'):
        repo.git.checkout(commit)
        result_time = search(file_path, regex)
        if result_time is not None:
            total_time += result_time

    print("Total time for file {} is {} seconds.".format(
        file_path, total_time))