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.
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 the installer downloaded from GitHub, then:
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
.
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:
Build the completion script:
bazel build //scripts:bazel-complete.bash
The completion file is built under bazel-bin/scripts/bazel-complete.bash
.
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 copy it somewhere on your local disk, e.g. 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
Bazel also comes with a Zsh completion script. To install it:
Add this script to a directory on your $fpath
:
fpath[1,0]=~/.zsh/completion/ mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completion/ cp scripts/zsh_completion/_bazel ~/.zsh/completion
You may have to call rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit
the first time to make it work.
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