git auto-complete for *branches* at the command line?

Question

On my Linux machine I have autocomplete for branches with Git.

[Note we are talking about git branch completion, not bash completion (e.g. commands, files, etc). Thus NOT Lane's answer at all]

For example I can type git checkout+TAB and get a list of branches.

Or I can type git checkout feb*+TAB to get all branches that begin with "feb".

How can I get this functionality on a Mac?

I tried downloading and running bash-completion/bash_completion and bash-completion/bash_completion.sh.in but no joy. The first gave error messages about declare: -A invalid_option. The second gave no errors. When I git checkout+TAB though I am still getting a list of files in the directory, not branches. I am in the project root.

Auto-complete for directories and bash commands are working ok, so it's specific to Git.

Answer 1

Ok, so I needed the git autocompletion script.

I got that from this url using the following command in the Terminal app:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash -o ~/.git-completion.bash

No need to worry about what directory you're in when you run this as your home directory(~) is used with the target.

Then I added to my ~/.bash_profile file the following 'execute if it exists' code:

if [ -f ~/.git-completion.bash ]; then
  . ~/.git-completion.bash
fi

Update: I'm making these bits of code more concise to shrink down my .bashrc file, in this case I now use:

test -f ~/.git-completion.bash && . $_

Note: $_ means the last argument to the previous command. so . $_ means run it - "it" being .git-completion.bash in this case

This still works on both Ubuntu and OSX and on machines without the script .git-completion.bash script.

Now git Tab (actually it's git TabTab ) works like a charm!

p.s.: If this doesn't work off the bat, you may need to run chmod u+x ~/.git-completion.bash to grant yourself the necessary permission:

• chmod is the command that modifies file permissions
• u means the user that owns the file, by default its creator, i.e. you
• + means set/activate/add a permission
• x means execute permission, i.e. the ability to run the script

Answer 2

Some people prefer to use a package manager to automate the installing, updating, and configuring of Mac OS packages. I am a fan of package managers, and I think Homebrew is the best package manager for Mac OS (some would say it's the de-facto Mac OS package manager).

Once you have installed Homebrew, you can simply install git along with bash-completion with brew install git bash-completion.

You'll then need to put the following in your ~/.bash_profile:

if [ -f `brew --prefix`/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash ]; then
  . `brew --prefix`/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash
fi

(Note: If this install fails with a 404 error, and you already have git installed, just remove the git part of this brew install)

More info on installing git and bash-completion with brew here.

Answer 3

Run this on terminal:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash -o ~/.git-completion.bash

Then, do this:

vi ~/.bash_profile

Add this lines:

if [ -f ~/.git-completion.bash ]; then
  . ~/.git-completion.bash
fi

That's all. This worked for me.

Answer 4

git and git-completion.bash already come with macOS command line tools (xcode-select --install). To enable bash autocomplete, add this to your ~/.bash_profile.

[ -f /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/share/git-core/git-completion.bash ] \
    && . /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/share/git-core/git-completion.bash

This will also enable autocomplete for git branches.

Answer 5

Git autocompletion on Catalina and newer (using Homebrew)

macOs changed from bash to zsh as default shell starting with Catalina.
So you will need specific autocomplete scripts for zsh.

Here is how to install them with Homebrew:

brew install zsh-completions

Brew's zsh-completion does in fact include git-completion.

To activate autocompletion you then need to add a small block of code to your ~/.zshrc. You may have to create that file in your user folder if it does not already exist. Note: The output of the above installation script will tell you exactly what code to add, so read that carefully and copy from there in case it has been updated since my writing here.

if type brew &>/dev/null; then
  FPATH=$(brew --prefix)/share/zsh-completions:$FPATH

  autoload -Uz compinit
  compinit
fi

Important:
When installation has finished, read the output of the installation script.
It will instruct you not only to add code to .zshrc but also give you advice on additional actions that might be necessary, like force rebuilding zcompdump. But most likely you will not need the additional steps.

Answer 6

Here's what's confusing some of you: you have brew or ports installed, but you are using an the system git in /usr/bin/. To check this:

which git

If you see /usr/bin/git then either brew isn't correctly configured, or you've not installed git via brew.

If you install git via brew, then enabling bash completions for brew will also enable bash completions for git. This is because /usr/local/etc/bash_completion actually sources everything in /usr/local/bash_completion.d, and the brew package for git installs a git completion script there.

Answer 7

You could install bash and git from MacPorts with the "bash_completion" option enabled. It is probably the easiest way of maintaining both git and the completions up-to-date.

http://denis.tumblr.com/post/71390665/adding-bash-completion-for-git-on-mac-os-x-snow-leopard

To install MacPorts: http://www.macports.org/install.php/

Additional info

As for locating the completion settings on your Linux system, have a look in /etc/bash_completion.d/git (it is a long file). Copying that by itself probably won't work, though, as it is designed to be sourced by the completion framework through /etc/bash_completion (which is sourced from /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh; files in /etc/profile.d are sourced from /etc/profile).

Answer 8

For macOS Catalina+, in zsh:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh -o ~/.git-completion.zsh

Then update your ~/.zshrc with:

if [ -f ~/.git-completion.zsh ]; then
    . ~/.git-completion.zsh
fi

Answer 9

If your git completion is partially broken, even after sourcing https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash, you may just need to update your git version.

For example, when I typed git check + TAB, it would correctly autocomplete git checkout. But when I typed git checkout + TAB, it did not display the list of branches, only HEAD.

The fix for me was to update my git version. I was on 2.7.0, which apparently was not compatible with the latest git-completion.bash. I ran brew upgrade git, which updated it to 2.13.0, and now it properly autocompletes my branch names.

Answer 10

By far, the best reference I've found to solve this very issue is on SpinDance, by Connor Livingston:

If the git-completion.bash script doesn’t exist on your machine, please retrieve it from the link I provided above (which is this) and save it to your local machine in a new file called git-completion.bash in the /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ directory. If the git-completion.bash script exists on your machine, but is not in the /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ directory, we should create a copy of it in that directory. A quick sudo cp /current/path/to/your/git-completion.bash /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash should do the trick. For those who are curious about the /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ directory: it’s for storing new completion commands, and you may have to create it if it doesn’t already exist on your machine.

At this point the git-completion.bash script should exist on your local machine in the /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ directory. Now we’ll plug the git completion script into bash by pointing to it from ~/.bash_profile.

Note: the tilde in the previous sentence refers to the home directory on your computer. Add the following line to ~/.bash_profile: source /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash and save. The final step is to reload your bash profile. You can achieve this by running source ~/.bash_profile in your current bash session.

Answer 11

Tried it and it works well for branches but when you do git st + tab then it shows the error like this

unknown option: --list-cmds=list-mainporcelain,others,nohelpers,alias,list-complete,config usage: git [--version] [--help] [-C ] [-c =] [--exec-path[=]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path] [-p | --paginate | --no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare] [--git-dir=] [--work-tree=] [--namespace=] []

Searched the internet and found that --list-cmds in .git-completion.bash was in latest version of the git and on my mac the git version was 2.17.2

Here are the solutions

Solution 1

1. Check the version of the git by using git --version command

2. Then put the same version number in the url as I did

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/v2.17.2/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash -o ~/.git-completion.bash
   

3. Then follow the same steps as in the top answer, put the below code in ~/.bash_profile

   if [ -f ~/.git-completion.bash ]; then
     . ~/.git-completion.bash
   fi
   

Solution 2

You should try to update the git version to the latest then it should work.

Answer 12

Install oh-my-zsh and set zsh as your default shell and thank me later :)

Answer 13

Most users will have git installed as part of xcode command line tools at /usr/bin/git and bash completion rules for git will be available at /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/share/git-core/git-completion.bash.

In this case no need to install git from Homebrew or source git completion rules from raw.githubusercontent.com. Just create a symlink as follows:

cd /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/
ln -s /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/share/git-core/git-completion.bash git

Note: make sure you've installed and configured bash-completion package from Homebrew.

Answer 14

See appendix A1.7 of the Git handbook:

Zsh also ships with a tab-completion library for Git. To use it, simply run autoload -Uz compinit && compinit in your .zshrc.

Answer 15

If you are willing to switch to a different shell, the fish shell has this feature built in. It also has some other handy features such as autocomplete while typing.

Answer 16

Locate your .bashrc file.

Open it and add this line at the bottom:

source /etc/bash_completion.d/git