Re: Bash completion very slow in large repo

From: Matthew Hughes <matthewhughes934@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 19, 2026, 20:25 UTC
Message-ID: <aoYQ9CCzPM3qKVfZ@desktop>
In-Reply-To: <an9iXOqOOvFfyN4A@desktop>

On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 07:55:36PM +0100, Matthew Hughes wrote:

> I'm not sure about potential fixes. Hacking around on it the best I could come
> up with was a workaround: add an env var to skip index completion during bash
> completion, so the completion falls back to the default Bash file completion
> (i.e. complete any time), here that is (just for demonstration):

My final workaround (read: filthy hack) was to re-define `__git_complete_index_file` just after sourcing the completion script like:

    # copy __git_complete_index_file to __orig__git_complete_index_file
    eval "__orig$(declare -f __git_complete_index_file)"

    __git_complete_index_file () {
        # options that require 'git' to inspect all files on disk
        local slow_opts_re="(^|[[:space:]])(--others|--modified|--deleted|--ignored|--killed)($|[[:space:]])"    
        if [[ "$1" =~ $slow_opts_re ]]
        then
            return
        fi

        __orig__git_complete_index_file "$@"
    }