Enable bash tab completion for Mercurial (hg)

Question

I've installed Mercurial (1.4.3-1) on ubuntu and it doesn't do tab completion in bash by default. What is the simplest way to enable this feature?

Fuentes

You should really consider using a newer Mercurial release. There are PPA repositories available for Ubuntu that you can enable to get your normal auto-update behavior of Mercurial in a seamless fashion that won't have you more than a year behind current: launchpad.net/~mercurial-ppa/+archive/releases – Todo

Answer 1

You need to

• Install an up-to-date package for Mercurial, see the Mercurial PPA. This will give you a /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial file with the completion code for Mercurial. You can source this file directly to enable completion support for Mercurial.

You can also enable completion support for all programs:

• Install the bash-completion package: aptitude install bash-completion.

• Source /etc/bash_completion in your ~/.bashrc file:

  # Use bash-completion, if available
  if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
  fi
  

  This will enable completion for all commands, including Mercurial.

Candide

Answer 2

curl https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/raw-file/tip/contrib/bash_completion -o ~/.hg-completion.bash && source ~/.hg-completion.bash

---

The mercurial autocomplete script appears to be maintained here:

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/file/tip/contrib/bash_completion

source this script in your .bashrc or equivalent

Rodriques

Answer 3

System wide

for all users.

$ sudo curl https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/raw-file/tip/contrib/bash_completion -o /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial
$ source /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial

Worrell

Answer 4

The bash_completion script location has changed so you need to do

curl https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/raw-file/tip/contrib/bash_completion -o ~/.hg-completion.bash && source ~/.hg-completion.bash

instead of

curl http://www.selenic.com/hg/raw-file/tip/contrib/bash_completion -o ~/.hg-completion.bash && source ~/.hg-completion.bash

Pritchard

This answer is cross-platform and doesn't need Ubuntu. I used it on OS X. It should work everywhere you have bash, curl (and hg ;-). – Huntsman

You should update this to include adding source ~/.hg-completion.bash in your .bashrc so that you don't have to run this in every new shell. – Giffy

Answer 5

Install bash-completion package in your Linux (depends on Linux Distribution you are using).

Then go to /etc/bash_completion.d/ and create a file called hg and put the content of this script (below) into created hg file.

http://fts.ifac.cnr.it/cgi-bin/dwww/usr/share/doc/bash/completion-contrib/hg

Amphibrach

Unfortunately the link above doesn't seem to work anymore - results in a 403. – Gabriella

I think this is the new location for bash-completion (at least according to the Debian Bullseye repo): github.com/scop/bash-completion .. heres some more info on it: https://mcmap.net/q/519128/-multi-level-bash-completion – Spurt

Answer 6

Since it's neither tagged nor titled "ubuntu", and because googling with fedora also leads here, I'll add a variation on Martin's answer that works by referencing /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial.shinstead of /etc/bash_completion in your ~/.bashrc:

# Use bash-completion, if available if [ -f /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial.sh ]; then . /etc/bash_completion.d/mercurial.sh fi

Not sure if the OS makes this distinction necessary, but this works for me on Fedora 11 through 20.

Correction: Fedora 11 and Fedora 20. (Not tested 12-19.)

Sobriquet