Command-Line Completion

You can enable command-line completion (also known as tab-completion) in Bash and Zsh. This lets you tab-complete command names, flags names and flag values, and target names.

Bash

Bazel comes with a Bash completion script.

If you installed Bazel:

• From the APT repository, then you're done -- the Bash completion script is already installed in /etc/bash_completion.d.

• From Homebrew, then you're done -- the Bash completion script is already installed in $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d.

• From the installer downloaded from GitHub, then:

  1. Locate the absolute path of the completion file. The installer copied it to the bin directory.

     Example: if you ran the installer with --user, this will be $HOME/.bazel/bin. If you ran the installer as root, this will be /usr/local/lib/bazel/bin.

  2. Do one of the following:

     • Either copy this file to your completion directory (if you have one).

       Example: on Ubuntu this is the /etc/bash_completion.d directory.

     • Or source the completion file from Bash's RC file.

       Add a line similar to the one below to your ~/.bashrc (on Ubuntu) or ~/.bash_profile (on macOS), using the path to your completion file's absolute path:

       source /path/to/bazel-complete.bash
       

• Via bootstrapping, then:

  1. Build the completion script:

     bazel build //scripts:bazel-complete.bash
     

  2. The completion file is built under bazel-bin/scripts/bazel-complete.bash.

     Do one of the following:

     • Copy this file to your completion directory, if you have one.

       Example: on Ubuntu this is the /etc/bash_completion.d directory

     • Copy it somewhere on your local disk, such as to $HOME, and source the completion file from Bash's RC file.

       Add a line similar to the one below to your ~/.bashrc (on Ubuntu) or ~/.bash_profile (on macOS), using the path to your completion file's absolute path:

       source /path/to/bazel-complete.bash
       

Zsh

Bazel comes with a Zsh completion script.

If you installed Bazel:

• From the APT repository, then you're done -- the Zsh completion script is already installed in /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions.

  If you have a heavily customized .zshrc and the autocomplete does not function, try one of the following solutions:

  Add the following to your .zshrc:

      zstyle :compinstall filename '/home/tradical/.zshrc'
  
      autoload -Uz compinit
      compinit
  

  or

  Follow the instructions here

  If you are using oh-my-zsh, you may want to install and enable the zsh-autocomplete plugin. If you'd prefer not to, use one of the solutions described above.

• From Homebrew, then you're done -- the Zsh completion script is already installed in $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh/site-functions.

• From the installer downloaded from GitHub, then:

  1. Locate the absolute path of the completion file. The installer copied it to the bin directory.

     Example: if you ran the installer with --user, this will be $HOME/.bazel/bin. If you ran the installer as root, this will be /usr/local/lib/bazel/bin.

  2. Add this script to a directory on your $fpath:

     fpath[1,0]=~/.zsh/completion/
     mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completion/
     cp /path/from/above/step/_bazel ~/.zsh/completion
     

     You may have to call rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit the first time to make it work.

  3. Optionally, add the following to your .zshrc.

     # This way the completion script does not have to parse Bazel's options
     # repeatedly.  The directory in cache-path must be created manually.
     zstyle ':completion:*' use-cache on
     zstyle ':completion:*' cache-path ~/.zsh/cache