I'm working in a Scala project that has target/ directories entered as ignored in the .gitignore . However, there is also Scala code being generated during the build which is being nested under a target/ directory, which I want to have included in my search. If I remove the target/ entry from .gitignore , the search picks it up (and lots of other junk). However, I don't really want to exclude these files from being ignored by Git, because they are not supposed to be committed. I just want to exclude them from being ignored by searching.

I am using the develop (prerelease 0.300) version of Spacemacs, with Helm. An example of a search command I am using is SPC s P (search project w/input) which I press while the cursor is on some identifier that I want to find in project files. I have both ag and grep installed. I don't know what Helm is using to search (maybe even git grep ?).

SPC SPC describe-key RET SPC s P :

SPC s P runs the command spacemacs/helm-project-smart-do-search-region-or-symbol (found in evil-normal-state-local-map), which is an interactive Lisp function in ‘../../funcs.el’. It is bound to SPC *, SPC s P, M-m *, M-m s P. (spacemacs/helm-project-smart-do-search-region-or-symbol) Search in current project using ‘dotspacemacs-search-tools’ with default input. Search for a search tool in the order provided by ‘dotspacemacs-search-tools’.