hledger/hledger/shell-completion

hledger shell completions

This code generates shell completion scripts for hledger’s command line interface. Context-sensitive completions are usually triggered by pressing the tab key once or twice after typing the command hledger (or hledger-ui or hledger-web).

Currently there are detailed bash completions here in the hledger repo, which this doc is mostly about; and there are some zsh completions maintained in zsh-completions repo.

bash completions

An old demo:

To use hledger’s bash shell completions, these must be installed on your system: - bash - the bash-completion package - hledger’s bash completion script - hledger, hledger-ui, and/or hledger-web

For latest user setup instructions and feature list, please see Install > Shell completions.

Generating the bash completions

In the main hledger repo, first build and install an up-to-date version of hledger in PATH, then run make to detect its commands and options and generate the hledger-completion.bash script. GNU make and GNU m4 are required.

stack install hledger
cd hledger/shell-completion
make

This is normally done at release time. The makefile runs hledger, hledger -h, and hledger CMD -h for each command, to detect (built-in) command names, flag names and flag values, and it combines these with a stub script to form the final completion script. You can add -jNUMPROCS to make it run faster.

Data from the journal (account names, payee names etc.) is not gathered here; the script detects those dynamically at completion time.

Installing the bash completions

(If you want a released version of the completion script, use the Install page link above instead.)

To install the dev completion script, also regenerating it if needed:

make install

This will copy hledger-completion.bash to $XDG_DATA_HOME/bash-completion/completions/hledger. (See bash-completion’s docs for other places you can install the script if needed.) bash will use it when completing command lines beginning with “hledger” or “hledger-ui” or “hledger-web”.

You can also just source the script it in your shell startup; this will load completions eagerly, adding a delay to your shell start up time. Or you can source it in your current bash session for testing.

Packaging the bash completions

It’s great when hledger packagers can make shell completions just work for users.

Currently there is one completion script: hledger-completion.bash. It is included in the hledger package’s tarball on Hackage.

hledger versions before 1.40 don’t have up-to-date bash completions.

For hledger 1.40, the up-to-date script is at 39dfe5702e/hledger/shell-completion/hledger-completion.bash.

Since hledger 1.41, this is included in the Github release bindists, and available at urls like https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/1.41/hledger/shell-completion/hledger-completion.bash

After it has been loaded, this script will provide completions for hledger, hledger-ui and hledger-web. Note if it is installed only as hledger, bash-completion will not load it until the user types hledger<SPACE><TAB>. Consider also symbolic-linking it as hledger-ui and hledger-web, so that hledger-ui<SPACE><TAB> and hledger-web<SPACE><TAB> will also load it.

Here is a place to track the status of shell completions in hledger packages. As of 1.40:

• Homebrew: includes slightly stale completions, installed as hledger only
• Arch Linux AUR: packaging in progress
• Others: unknown

zsh completions

There are some zsh completions in the zsh-completions repo.

Completions for other shells

You’re welcome to add completion scripts for other shells. It should not be too hard! All available hledger options and commands are already there (generated by the Makefile).

The generated text files with options and commands are: commands.txt, generic-options.txt, and options-*.txt where * is the subcommand.

Instructions to add support for another shell:

1. Create e.g. hledger-completion.fish.m4 as a template file.

2. Add a Make rule to transform it to hledger-completion.fish.

3. Use m4 commands to include hledger options and commands into your script template. See hledger-completion.bash.m4 as a reference.

4. Use make and then make hledger-completion.fish to create and test the completion script.

5. Finally, if everything is working, also add the generated artifact hledger-completion.fish to the repo so that people can use it directly.