When do I have to call compinit manually?

[borekb]

From README:

Automatic compinit and bashcompinit
You no longer need to put compinit or bashcompinit in your .zshrc file. Znap will run these for you as needed.

But I need to run it manually after e.g.

znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions

or

znap source agkozak/zsh-z

otherwise, completions don't work there.

I don't know much about how Zsh or completions work, could somebody explain what the README section really means and when I still need to run compinit manually?

---

UPDATE: there was a bug that is now fixed, see #61 (comment).

[marlonrichert]

Short answer: Never. With Znap, you really never have to call compinit manually. Any completions added to your $fpath while executing the code inside your .zshrc file will be automatically passed to compinit.

Longer answer: Well, theoretically, you'd have to run compinit manually if you would add completions to your $fpath after your shell has started up. But there is no practical reason to ever do that. As long as you add your completions to your $fpath inside your .zshrc file only, then there really is no reason to ever bother running compinit manually when using Znap.

So, long story short, for your case, just put the following into your .zshrc file:

znap source agkozak/zsh-z
fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src )

I just tested it and the completions work fine that way. (If it doesn't for you, please open a bug report for it.)

[borekb]

I probably still don't understand because this .zshrc doesn't work for me (the completions don't work):

# Source Znap
source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh

# Load prompt as soon as possible
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure

# Add Oh-My-Zsh
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

# Somewhere later, completions:
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

Is this order wrong?

UPDATE: When I remove Oh My Zsh:

# Source Znap
source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh

# Load prompt as soon as possible
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure

# Completions
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

I get semi-functional completions – they do something although it looks different from what I'm used to and e.g. Up and Down keys don't work:

UPDATE 2: Oh, the above might actually be the default behavior of plain Zsh?! I've always used Oh My Zsh from day 1 and when I add it back and call compinit manually (I have to do it to make completions work):

# Source Znap
source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh

# Load prompt as soon as possible
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure

# Add Oh-My-Zsh
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

# Somewhere later, completions:
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

# Manual compinit
autoload -U compinit && compinit

I get the experience I'm used to:

UPDATE 3: Moving Oh My Zsh towards the bottom also works – it probably calls compinit internally:

# Source Znap
source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh

# Load prompt as soon as possible
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure

# Completions quite high up in `.zshrc`
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

# Oh-My-Zsh last (calls `compinit`?!)
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

---

So what am I doing "wrong", if anything? Oh My Zsh somehow seems significant for completions working or not – I prefer the UX of Oh My Zsh + completions but that seems to require a manual call to compinit (or adding Oh My Zsh last which probably calls compinit automatically?). Should I at any point be adding things to fpath manually?

I'd just like to understand what's going on and what's the right way. Thanks for your help 🙏.

[marlonrichert]

You're right: Completions don't seem to work correctly when I add znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh to my .zshrc file. I'll have to investigate why.

[marlonrichert]

@borekb It should be fixed now (2a42781, 5464968). Please update your .zshrc file with the following:

source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure               # Show instant prompt.
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh 'lib/*'         # Load OMZ's libs only. You don't need the rest.
fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src ) # Add extra completions to $fpath.
znap source agkozak/zsh-z                   # Init `z` command.

[borekb]

@marlonrichert Thanks! A couple of observations:

1: I indeed don't need to call compinit manually and both zsh-z and zsh-completions work 🎉.

2: I need to source the whole OMZ to get "better completions" (see "UPDATE" vs. "UPDATE 2" screenshots above):

source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure
-znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh 'lib/*'
+znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh
fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src )
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

3: I don't quite understand this line:

fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src )

I've never needed to deal with fpath before so this is new to me. The above seems to download (pull) the zsh-users/zsh-completions repo, similarly to the znap source command, but are you saying that it's necessary to do this fpath thing instead of a simpler source? This seems to work for me as well:

znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions

---

Overall, this is a .zshrc snippet that works for me:

source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

[marlonrichert]

2: I need to source the whole OMZ to get "better completions" (see "UPDATE" vs. "UPDATE 2" screenshots above):

source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure
-znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh 'lib/*'
+znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh
fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src )
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

Sorry, it appears that I pushed in something that was slightly broken. Please update and try again. Both should produce the same result now.

3: I don't quite understand this line:

fpath+=( ~[zsh-users/zsh-completions]/src )

I've never needed to deal with fpath before so this is new to me. The above seems to download (pull) the zsh-users/zsh-completions repo, similarly to the znap source command, but are you saying that it's necessary to do this fpath thing instead of a simpler source? This seems to work for me as well:

znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions

The two statements are (in this case) equivalent, because zsh-completions.plugin.zsh does the same thing under the hood. Of course you can use znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions, if that's what you prefer; the end result is the same. I personally just prefer to eliminate all unnecessary steps in between. 🙂

Overall, this is a .zshrc snippet that works for me:

source ~/.znap/zsh-snap/znap.zsh
znap prompt sindresorhus/pure
znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh
znap source zsh-users/zsh-completions
znap source agkozak/zsh-z

Sure, that's fine. znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh 'lib/*' is slightly faster than znap source ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh, because it eliminates all unnecessary steps, but you're free to use whichever one you prefer.

[borekb]

A question not to bury it in the sibling thread:

Znap seems to overwrite compinit to make it basically an empty function, so it seems to have zero cost compared to usual. I wonder if it's possibly a good idea to add this as the last line of my .zshrc:

# Last line of my `.zshrc:
autoload -U compinit && compinit

Would this make completions any safer? Like, if there are "bugs" in Znap (like before fixes) compinit would be called manually; and if Znap handles it via its magic, it's zero cost so there's no harm calling it?! At least that's what I'm thinking...

[marlonrichert]

• Calling autoload compinit after sourcing Znap won't do anything because compinit() is already defined. autoload will only load functions that haven't been defined yet.
• Calling compinit after sourcing Znap won't do anything, because (as you noticed) it's an empty function. Sure, there's no harm in calling it, but it’s also completely useless because it doesn't do anything.
• Calling the actual compinit can take over a second. You don't want to be doing that more than once during startup. That's why Znap prevents it from being called again.
• There is no need to run compinit more than once. After running compinit, you can always add additional functions to the completion system by calling compdef.

[borekb]

Thank you, that explains it nicely.