July 16, 2017
In a previous post, I have explained how I have setup oh-my-zsh with the git plugin. I am also using homebrew to manage the packages installed on my Mac. After upgrading Git recently, I have noticed the Git completion was not as powerful anymore.
To explain how the Zsh completion is cool and supposed to be, here is an example of a correct completion:
git commit --<tab>
--all -- stage all modified and deleted paths
--allow-empty -- allow recording an empty commit
--allow-empty-message -- allow recording a commit with an empty message
--amend -- amend the tip of the current branch
--author -- override the author name used in the commit
--cleanup -- specify how the commit message should be cleaned up
--date -- override the author date used in the commit
--dry-run -- only show list of paths that are to be commited or not, and any untracked
--edit -- edit the commit message before committing
--file -- read commit message from given file
--gpg-sign -- GPG-sign the commit
--include -- update the given files and commit the whole index
--interactive -- interactively update paths in the index file
--message -- use the given message as the commit message
--no-edit -- do not edit the commit message before committing
--no-gpg-sign -- do not GPG-sign the commit
--no-post-rewrite -- bypass the post-rewrite hook
--no-status -- do not include the output of git status in the commit message template
--no-verify -- do not look for suspicious lines the commit introduces
--null -- separate dry run entry output with NUL
--only -- commit only the given files
--patch -- use the interactive patch selection interface to chose which changes to commit
--porcelain -- output dry run in porcelain-ready format
--quiet -- suppress commit summary message
--reedit-message -- use existing commit object and edit log message
--reuse-message -- use existing commit object with same log message
--short -- output dry run in short format
--signoff -- add Signed-off-by line at the end of the commit message
--squash --fixup -- construct a commit message for use with rebase --autosquash
--status -- include the output of git status in the commit message template
--template -- use file as a template commit message
--untracked-files -- show files in untracked directories
--verbose -- show unified diff of all file changes
The completion displays all the parameters for a Git command with a short documentation.
After updating Git with the brew update command here is what it looked like:
$git commit --<tab>
--all --author= --dry-run --fixup= --message=
--only --reedit-message= --short --template= --verbose
--allow-empty --cleanup= --edit --include --no-edit
--patch --reset-author --signoff --untracked-files --verify
--amend --date --file= --interactive --no-verify
--quiet --reuse-message= --squash= --untracked-files=
Yep, all the integrated documentation was gone :( I was preparing for a Git training at Ippon and I was disappointed not to be able to show this very useful feature to my colleagues new to Git.
It turned that the culprit is homebrew installing a completion for Git which overrides the Zsh completion. You can verify this with:
$ls -l /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d
total 64
lrwxr-xr-x 1 raphael admin 64 Oct 21 2016 tig-completion.bash -> ../../Cellar/tig/2.2_1/etc/bash_completion.d/tig-completion.bash
The solution is to reinstall git with homebrew and specify not to install the bash completion.
$ brew uninstall git
$ brew install git --without-completions
And voilà!