Autocomplete Git branch names in Terminal

No more typing long winded branch names

I should have looked earlier. I knew it was a time thief. I should have looked earlier.

At work we use the format issue-123-short-description for our Git branch names. The number links through to our issue tracker and may also start story-123 where appropriate. Some developers in the office use GUIs to manage their Git stuff so didn’t feel the pain and certainly didn’t limit themselves when choosing ‘short’ branch-name-with-clever-description-texts.

But I finally did the digging and found the solution to the problem.

Open up a Terminal window

>curl https://raw.github.com/git/git/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash -o ~/.git-completion.bash

then you need to edit your .bash_profile file

>nano ~/.bash_profile

to add the following to the bottom and save

if [ -f ~/.git-completion.bash ]; then
 . ~/.git-completion.bash
fi

and finally reload .bash_profile with

>source ~/.bash_profile

and you are done! Branch names should now be just a tab away.