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Git Branch Autocompletion

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Naming git branches is something most of us have down to a science. My branch naming pattern is usually {issue number}-short-feature-description, though many developers prefer to lead with the description and end with the issue.

Regardless of the pattern you use, having a feature like autocomplete can save you a lot of time typing or copy/pasting. Here's how you can implement autocomplete for git branches!

Start by downloading the git-completion.sh file from GitHub:

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

Next, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile file:

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

The last step is restarting your terminal. Voila! Now you can type git checkout {search-string} and press tab to select the lone branch that matches or hit tab again to see all matches!

Autocomplete for git makes navigating all of my branches much faster!

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Discussion

  1. JONATHAN DOS SANTOS

    this needs to find it’s way into official distribuition!

  2. Andras Somi

    If you use zsh + oh-my-zsh, you can get the same effect with the git plugin.

  3. Djibril

    Can probably run source ~/.bash_profile if you don’t want to restart your terminal

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