Bash – Git auto-complete

Zsh is attempting to be clever in choosing completions, but it's not clever enough to know that after doctrine --configuration=, it should complete a file name. Bash is either clever enough to parse this command correctly, or too stupid to complete anything but a file name here.

You can write a completion function for doctrine. This is a little advanced, though — completion functions tend to be a little arcane. You may find it easier to write a completer using zsh's alternative, older, simpler, but less powerful completion system, compctl (documented in the zshcompctl man page).

If you have a bash completion function for doctrine, you might be able to get zsh to read it by including autoload bashcompinit; bashcompinit in your ~/.zshrc. See Switching from bash on the zsh wiki.

You may find it useful to bind a few keys to _bash_complete-word. This widget (interactive command) performs completion of a few built-in types, depending on the last character in the key sequence that invoked the widget: / for directories, $ for parameter names, etc. For example, include bindkey '^X/' _bash_complete-word in your ~/.zshrc, and press Ctrl+X / to complete a file name in any context (you might need to temporarily insert a space before the file name, if the file name is preceded by punctuation that is not a word separator in the shell).

Yes, there is at least one major pitfall when considering git to manage a home directory that is not a concern with subversion.

Git is both greedy and recursive by default.

Subversion will naively ignore anything it doesn't know about and it stops processing folders either up or down from your checkout when it reaches one that it doesn't know about (or that belongs to a different repository). Git, on the other hand, keeps recursing into all child directories making nested checkouts very complicated due to namespace issues. Since your home directory is likely also the place where you checkout and work on various other git repositories, having your home directory in git is almost certainly going to make your life an impossible mess.

As it turns out, this is the main reason people checkout their dotfiles into an isolated folder and then symlink into it. It keeps git out of the way when doing anything else in any child directory of your $HOME. While this is purely a matter of preference if checking your home into subversion, it becomes a matter of necessity if using git.

However, there is an alternate solution. Git allows for something called a "fake root" where all the repository machinery is hidden in an alternate folder that can be physically separated from the checkout working directory. The result is that the git toolkit won't get confused: it won't even SEE your repository, only the working copy. By setting a couple environment variables you can tip off git where to find the goods for those moments when you are managing your home directory. Without the environment variables set nobody is the wiser and your home looks like it's classic file-y self.

To make this trick flow a little smoother, there are some great tools out there. The vcs-home mailing list seems like the defacto place to start, and the about page has a convenient wrap up of howtos and people's experiences. Along the way are some nifty little tools like vcsh, mr. If you want to keep your home directory directly in git, vcsh is almost a must have tool. If you end up splitting your home directory into several repostories behind the scenes, combine vcsh with mr for quick and not very dirty way to manage it all at once.