It would be nice to have an option to exclude version control system (VCS) directories in a recursive grep.

This can be done effectively with these options
    --exclude-dir=.bzr --exclude-dir=CVS --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=.hg --exclude-dir=.svn

But having a single, simple option would be preferred.

tar already has this
    --exclude-vcs
        Exclude version control system directories.