So i'm trying to refine my windows search indexer settings, which began with a rebuild. Apparently windows has a funny inefficient way of omitting paths on its own. If you remove an exclusion and re-index, if windows doesnt like it, it just gets added back.

Things like the git folder, or the vsc source folder. Instead of omitting the root folder "aka git, or source" it omits all subfolders separately and creates this absurdly huge list of exclusions. Nearly as bad as trying to keep the Environment PATH's in some kind of order.

Anyhow, it appears its wanting to exclude a path in my dropbox folder thats longer than it will show which results in path/to/item/is/too/long/.......

I cant see what comes after a certain point so I dont know whether I can live with the exclusion or I can cull it or what. i tried the old x86 ui but it shows as nothing from that path being omitted so i cant figure it out.

Does an area of the registry exist that shows these paths? I know one exists for defender exclusions, but what about search indexer? (or any other way i can see what this full path is)

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nevermind, i found out how to see the path's, or at least i have a general idea what its doing.

Any folder that is a repository (svn or git) its apparently auto excluding. I get the idea, as these are constantly changing in most cases. In mine, they are not. I'd love to have them included as im the only one who works out of them, and as such when its updated or changes i dont mind indexer updating itself.

if i rebuild the index, having to re-do these every time is taxing so i want to change the behavior at the source if possible.

I looked at the list of file types in advanced options, i dont see git or svn in the list - checked or unchecked. simply not there.

Is this part of the problem? I would think it not being there would lead to the exclusion of a file with that extension, not the entire folder still.

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hmm, seems the idea only partially holds weight. I have "less" of an idea what its doing. Its not a blanket omission, as it doesnt auto exclude my C:\msys\home subfolders which certainly have some repositories in there.

either way, what are my options to get on the other side of this. removing or changing the exclusions list is fine and dandy, until a rebuild is done. then everything i changed is undone, unless i find out how to alter this part of its behavior.

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hmm, more progress. appears this may have to do with the .git or .svn folders being marked as hidden, but only in some paths i guess. (perhaps depends on how the repo was added)

anyhow, outside of going around and unhiding them all (which i imagine would have to be done every time i add a new repo ugh) what are my choices. I imagine I could set the indexer to index hidden files somehow, but that would leave it indexing ALL hidden files from other paths and thats probably not ideal.

can i make it not exclude folders with .git or .svn folders that are hidden?

ugh