Code Worrier

Teaching myself to RTFM

Quick Tip: Autocomplete Git Commands and Branch Names in Bash

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In bash in Mac OS X, you can use [TAB] to autocomplete file paths. Wouldn’t if be nice if you could do the same with git commands and branch names?

You can. Here’s how.

First get the git-completion.bash script (view it here) and put it in your home directory:

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

Next, add the following lines to your .bash_profile. This tells bash to execute the git autocomplete script if it exists.

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

Now open a new shell, cd into a git repo, and start typing a git command. You should find that [TAB] now autocompletes git commands and git branch names.

For example, if you type git then add a space and hit [TAB], you’ll get a readout like this, which lists all available git commands:

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add                 filter-branch       reflog
am                  format-patch        relink
annotate            fsck                remote
apply               gc                  repack
archive             get-tar-commit-id   replace
bisect              grep                request-pull
blame               gui                 reset
branch              help                revert
bundle              imap-send           rm
checkout            init                send-email
cherry              instaweb            shortlog
cherry-pick         log                 show
citool              merge               show-branch
clean               mergetool           stage
clone               mv                  stash
commit              name-rev            status
config              notes               submodule
describe            p4                  svn
diff                pull                tag
difftool            push                whatchanged
fetch               rebase

Now to learn what some of these more exotic git commands do! What’s your favorite git command?

(I learned this way of installing git-completion.bash here.)

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