bazelbuild/bazel

New command "bazel completion (bash|zsh|fish)"

Open

#26,472 opened on Jul 4, 2025

View on GitHub
 (2 comments) (2 reactions) (0 assignees)Java (25,384 stars) (4,465 forks)batch import
P3help wantedteam-CLItype: feature request

Description

Description of the feature request:

Bazel should support printable completions like kubectl, helm, gh-cli, rustup... I can keep going. The main cause of delay of bazelbuild/bazelisk#29 although it was the most upvoted issue in bazelisk was that there was no trivial way to actually get it. I believe this shouldn't be the work of bazelisk, but rather a command in bazel itself.

Even if not for the bazelisk use case, providing completions directly in the subcommand itself is much more useful, coherent and simpler.

Which category does this issue belong to?

CLI

What underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?

No response

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

No response

What is the output of bazel info release?

No response

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

No response

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD ?

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

No response

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

No response

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javashell
Domain
clideveloper experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
3-5 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
JavaBazel internalsShell completion format
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
55
Research direction
Investigate how existing Bazel commands are structured (e.g., in //src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/runtime/commands/) to replicate for a new 'completion' command. Look at how tools like kubectl implement shell completion to understand output format. Determine if Bazel already has any completion infrastructure. The implementation should generate bash, zsh, and fish completion scripts dynamically based on available commands and options.