Git Branch Autocompletion
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!
![](https://davidwalsh.name/demo/2020/02/git-autocomplete.gif)
Autocomplete for git makes navigating all of my branches much faster!
this needs to find it’s way into official distribuition!
If you use zsh + oh-my-zsh, you can get the same effect with the git plugin.
Can probably run
source ~/.bash_profile
if you don’t want to restart your terminal