Problem: You have a new CLI tool foo, and it has a subcommand like foo generate-completions --shell=zsh. But you don't know where to put its output--or you think you know, but it doesn't seem to work.

This is a very simple ZSH plugin which has a table of tool names and the commands for outputting completion scripts for those tools. Currently known tools are:

On every shell load, it will filter that list for tools that

• you have installed (i.e. are on the $PATH)
• do not already have completions registered
• this plugin has not already generated completions for

It will run the completion command and save its output to a file _<toolname>. If the path of this repo is in $fpath (see below), then completions should work immediately.

This repo follows a zsh plugin convention established by oh-my-zsh. Most other plugin managers expect the same structure. Add zetlen/zsh-completion-generators using your chosen plugin manager's instructions. It will autoload the plugin, and put the plugin directory (and thus all generated completions) in the fpath variable, where zsh completions directories are listed.

1. Clone this repo
2. Add to your .zshrc:

   export fpath=(/path/to/zsh-completion-generators/ $fpath)
   source /path/to/zsh-completion-generators/zsh-completion-generators.plugin.zsh
   compinit # this may already be called elsewhere

⚠️ You'll need to source this plugin before calling compinit, so your favorite plugin manager may have special instructions for doing so.

Initial load of your first new shell after install may take a while, since it has to generate the completion files for each command that you have installed. However, it caches them, so subsequent loads will take no time.

Automatic regeneration on upgrade: When you upgrade a tool, this plugin automatically detects the newer binary and regenerates completions on the next shell load. The zsh-completion-generators-rebuild command is only needed if completions become corrupted or you want to force regeneration of all completions.

After regenerating completions, you may need to delete $HOME/.zcompdump and/or $HOME/.zcompcache/ for changes to take effect.

Some CLIs don't have completion commands that output shell scripts to stdout. Sometimes they want to automatically update your .zshrc, or place special configuration files elsewhere. This plugin is not compatible with those approaches.

You can add your own tool definitions without modifying this plugin by creating a user-local CSV file:

~/.config/zsh-completion-generators/generators.csv

Use the same format as the main generators.csv:

Tool,Command to generate completion
mytool,mytool completions zsh

This file will survive plugin updates.