zsh-completion-generators

Problem: You have a new CLI tool foo, and it has a subcommand like foo generate-completions --shell=zsh. But you don't know where to put its output--or you think you know, but it doesn't seem to work.

This is a very simple ZSH plugin which has a table of tool names and the commands for outputting completion scripts for those tools. Currently known tools are:

Tool	Command to generate completion
bk	bk completion zsh
bw	bw completion --shell zsh
cargo	rustup completions zsh cargo
chronoctl	chronoctl completion zsh
deno	deno completions zsh
docker	docker completion zsh
fd	fd --gen-completions
fly	fly completion zsh
gh	gh completion --shell zsh
hugo	hugo completion zsh
jira	jira completion zsh
mise	mise completion zsh
orbctl	orbctl completion zsh
pnpm	pnpm completion zsh
pumas	pumas generate-completion zsh
rbw	rbw gen-completions zsh
rustup	rustup completions zsh rustup
starship	starship completions zsh
uv	uv generate-shell-completion zsh
zellij	zellij setup --generate-completion zsh

On every shell load, it will filter that list for tools that

• you have installed (i.e. are on the $PATH)
• do not already have completions registered
• this plugin has not already generated completions for

It will run the completion command and save its output to a file _<toolname>. If the path of this repo is in $fpath (see below), then completions should work immediately.

Installation

This repo follows a zsh plugin convention established by oh-my-zsh. Most other plugin managers expect the same structure. Add zetlen/zsh-completion-generators using your chosen plugin manager's instructions. It will autoload the plugin, and put the plugin directory (and thus all generated completions) in the fpath variable, where zsh completions directories are listed.

Manual installation

1. Clone this repo
2. Add to your .zshrc:

   export fpath=(/path/to/zsh-completion-generators/ $fpath)
   source /path/to/zsh-completion-generators/zsh-completion-generators.plugin.zsh
   compinit # this may already be called elsewhere

⚠️ You'll need to source this plugin before calling compinit, so your favorite plugin manager may have special instructions for doing so.

Initial load of your first new shell after install may take a while, since it has to generate the completion files for each command that you have installed. However, it caches them, so subsequent loads will take no time.

Notes

If you upgrade one of these tools and its completions change, this plugin won't know about it by default. The alias zsh-completion-generators-rebuild will manually delete all the generated completion files, and they will be regenerated on the next new shell.

After changing any CLI completions, you'll always benefit from deleting $HOME/.zcompdump and/or $HOME/.zcompcache/ before starting your first new shell.

Some CLIs don't have completion commands that output shell scripts to stdout. Sometimes they want to automatically update your .zshrc, or place special configuration files elsewhere. This plugin is not compatible with those approaches.