Git auto-complete for *branches* at the command line

auto-completebashcommand linegitterminal

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.

Best Answer

ok, so I needed the git autocompletion script.

I got that from this url:

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
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