Problem - Search ONLY uses the main branch in a repository ( No index for other branches )

[Nima Chavooshi]

Hello everyone, 

We are using Bitbucket DataCenter version in our on-premise env. In order to be able to have search capability in our source codes, our Bitbucket has been integrated with ElasticSearch. The issue is that the search does not find any result in branches except "main". it seems to be a limitation on how bitbucket handles indexing and from what we understand, bitbucket can only index the main branche for the repos. 

We are looking for a solution or workaround to index the code/content which is in other branches. From a dev perspective, we must be able to search all branches for one repo not only main one!

[Victor Menes]

Hey Nima,

Please allow me to try to help you here :)

Unfortunately, according to Bitbucket's Search Code Syntax documentation, only the default main/master branch is searchable.

Also, from a old stack overflow discussion, that decision seems to be made because of performance and the use case for it - Stack Overflow discussion - From 2015 

I understand that might be disappointing and I am sorry for that, but we had a Feature Request opened to address the exact same need you described here. It was updated yesterday Oct 27th, 2023, but that will not be implemented on the next 12 months from what it was updated on Jan 2022. That doesn't mean that it would not be implemented in the future, but by now that is the current state of what you are looking for.

• BSERV-8813 - Code search across multiple branches 

In addition, I would suggest adding yourself as watcher to receive updates and also vote for it to let our developers known that there are more customers looking forward seeing it implemented.

I hope that was helpful to your question and discussion here :)