Re: [PATCH v5 4/4] completion: fix zsh alias listing for subsection aliases
From: Junio C Hamano <hidden>
Date: 2026-02-17 20:01:13
Jonatan Holmgren [off-list ref] writes:
The zsh completion function __git_zsh_cmd_alias() uses 'git config --get-regexp' to enumerate aliases and then strips the "alias." prefix from each key. For subsection-style aliases (alias.name.command), this leaves "name.command" as the completion candidate instead of just "name". The bash completion does not have this problem because it goes through 'git --list-cmds=alias', which calls list_aliases() in C and already handles both alias syntaxes correctly. However, zsh needs both the alias name and its value for descriptive completion, which --list-cmds=alias does not provide.
OK. It is a natural question to ask why it is insufficient to use what bash side happily uses, and the above gives a good explanation.
Add a hidden --aliases-for-completion option to 'git help', following the existing --config-for-completion pattern. It outputs NUL-separated "name\nvalue" pairs using list_aliases(), which correctly resolves both the traditional (alias.name) and subsection (alias.name.command) formats. Update __git_zsh_cmd_alias() to use it.
Seeing that "--config-for-completion" is used for bash, I wonder if it would be a good follow-up topic to rewrite the bash completion to also use "--aliases-for-completion" (and possibly drop the need to support "git --list-cmds=alias" command). But that is clearly outside the scope of this topic.
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Missing sign-off.
quoted hunk
builtin/help.c | 15 +++++++++++++++ contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh | 2 +- 2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)diff --git a/builtin/help.c b/builtin/help.c index c09cbc8912..f02308a391 100644 --- a/builtin/help.c +++ b/builtin/help.c@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ static enum help_action { HELP_ACTION_DEVELOPER_INTERFACES, HELP_ACTION_CONFIG_FOR_COMPLETION, HELP_ACTION_CONFIG_SECTIONS_FOR_COMPLETION, + HELP_ACTION_ALIASES_FOR_COMPLETION, } cmd_mode; static char *html_path;@@ -90,6 +91,8 @@ static struct option builtin_help_options[] = { HELP_ACTION_CONFIG_FOR_COMPLETION, PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN), OPT_CMDMODE_F(0, "config-sections-for-completion", &cmd_mode, "", HELP_ACTION_CONFIG_SECTIONS_FOR_COMPLETION, PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN), + OPT_CMDMODE_F(0, "aliases-for-completion", &cmd_mode, "", + HELP_ACTION_ALIASES_FOR_COMPLETION, PARSE_OPT_HIDDEN), OPT_END(), };@@ -691,6 +694,18 @@ int cmd_help(int argc, help_format); list_config_help(SHOW_CONFIG_SECTIONS); return 0; + case HELP_ACTION_ALIASES_FOR_COMPLETION: { + struct string_list alias_list = STRING_LIST_INIT_DUP; + opt_mode_usage(argc, "--aliases-for-completion", + help_format); + list_aliases(&alias_list); + string_list_sort(&alias_list); + for (size_t i = 0; i < alias_list.nr; i++) + printf("%s%c%s%c", alias_list.items[i].string, '\n', + (char *)alias_list.items[i].util, '\0'); + string_list_clear(&alias_list, 1); + return 0; + } case HELP_ACTION_CONFIG: opt_mode_usage(argc, "--config", help_format); setup_pager(the_repository);diff --git a/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh b/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh index f5877bd7a1..c32186a977 100644 --- a/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh +++ b/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh@@ -202,7 +202,7 @@ __git_zsh_cmd_common () __git_zsh_cmd_alias () { local -a list - list=(${${(0)"$(git config -z --get-regexp '^alias\.*')"}#alias.}) + list=(${(0)"$(git help --aliases-for-completion)"}) list=(${(f)"$(printf "%s:alias for '%s'\n" ${(f@)list})"}) _describe -t alias-commands 'aliases' list && _ret=0 }