zsh-manpage-completion-generator

Automatically generate zsh completions from man page using fish shell completion files.
This program is inspired from nevesnunes/sh-manpage-completions.
But it supports more completion files and is much simply implemented, faster and easier to use, written in Go.

Requirements

This program depends on fish shell's manpage converter, create_manpage_completions.py.
So you must first install fish shell, See below for installation instructions.

https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell

If you do not want to install fish, you can also manually place and run the conversion python script as an example below.

# download script
$ sudo wget --backups=1 -P /usr/local/bin/ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/master/share/tools/{create_manpage_completions,deroff}.py
$ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/{create_manpage_completions,deroff}.py

# create arbitrary fish completion folder
$ mkdir ~/fish_generated_completions

# generate fish completions from manpage
$ create_manpage_completions.py --manpath --cleanup-in ~/fish_generated_completions -d ~/fish_generated_completions --progress

# and then specify -src option to convert
$ zsh-manpage-completion-generator -src ~/fish_generated_completions

Installation

From binaries:

Download the binary from GitHub Releases and place it in your $PATH.

Install the latest binary to /usr/local/bin:

curl -L "https://github.com/umlx5h/zsh-manpage-completion-generator/releases/latest/download/zsh-manpage-completion-generator_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar xz
chmod a+x ./zsh-manpage-completion-generator
sudo mv ./zsh-manpage-completion-generator /usr/local/bin/zsh-manpage-completion-generator

Homebrew:

brew install umlx5h/tap/zsh-manpage-completion-generator

AUR (Arch User Repository):

with any AUR helpers

yay -S zsh-manpage-completion-generator-bin
paru -S zsh-manpage-completion-generator-bin

Go install:

go install github.com/umlx5h/zsh-manpage-completion-generator@latest

Usage

You must first generate fish competion files.
It generates completion files, usually under folder $XDG_DATA_HOME/.local/share/fish/generated_completions

$ fish -c 'fish_update_completions'
Parsing man pages and writing completions to /home/dummy/.local/share/fish/generated_completions/

Then generate zsh completions from fish completions folder.
By default, it is generated in folder $XDG_DATA_HOME/.local/share/zsh/generated_man_completions

$ zsh-manpage-completion-generator
Converting fish completions: /home/dummy/.local/share/fish/generated_completions -> /home/dummy/.local/share/zsh/generated_man_completions
Completed. converted: 2579/2581, skipped: 142

Then add completions folder to your fpath in .zshrc.
(It is recommended to place them at the end of the fpath, so that human-generated completions such as zsh-users/zsh-completions will be preferred.)

fpath=(
   $fpath
   $HOME/.local/share/zsh/generated_man_completions
)
compinit # This is not necessary if it is called after this.

You may have to force rebuild zcompdump

$ rm -f "${ZDOTDIR-~}/.zcompdump" && compinit

It is recommended that compinit be called only once because of the startup time.
You can check the number of calls to compinit by using zprof.

Note that fpath must be added before compinit.
If you are using any zsh framework, check where it is adding fpath and calling compinit.

Option

The following command line options are supported.

You can change the path to the fish and zsh completions by specifying -dst and -src.
The -clean option can be specified to remove zsh completion folder before generating them.
This is useful for removing completions that are no longer needed.
(Note that the entire -dst folder will be deleted.)

$ zsh-manpage-completion-generator -h
Usage of zsh-manpage-completion-generator:
  -clean
        CAUTION: remove destination folder before converting
  -dst string
        zsh generated_completions destination folder (default "/home/dummy/.local/share/zsh/generated_man_completions")
  -src string
        fish generated_completions src folder (default "/home/dummy/.local/share/fish/generated_completions")
  -verbose
        verbose log
  -version
        show version

Caveat

• Some invalid options may be generated, but there is nothing that can be done about this, as this is also the case with fish.

Related

• nevesnunes/sh-manpage-completions
• RobSis/zsh-completion-generator

License

MIT