[zsh] Completion file at /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_fzf

[rieje]

This is more of a zsh question. In RHEL-based distros, completions for zsh are at /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_fzf. Is it appropriate if this file still needs to be sourced to get e.g. ssh ** completion to work? files in /usr/share/zsh/site-functions are intended to work out of the box so not really appropriate for this _fzf that needs to be sourced? Wondering if it's worth submitting an issue to the packager.

[oiltea94]

It depends on what the packaged _fzf contains. There are two different things often called "completion" here:

• A conventional zsh completion function for the fzf command itself, discoverable through $fpath/compinit.
• fzf's interactive fuzzy-completion integration, which implements ssh **<TAB> and other ** triggers for other commands.

The upstream shell/completion.zsh is the second kind. It performs initialization when sourced in an interactive shell: near the bottom it runs zle -N fzf-completion and bindkey '^I' fzf-completion. Merely putting that script in a function search directory does not execute that initialization when the shell starts.

For fzf >= 0.48.0, upstream provides the integration through the binary; the documented zsh setup is:

source <(fzf --zsh)

Put it in the interactive-shell setup (normally .zshrc, after your existing completion setup). This enables key bindings as well as fuzzy completion. With older packaged versions, source the package's actual completion.zsh integration script according to its documentation instead. Do not assume _fzf is that script based solely on the filename.

For a packaging report, useful evidence would be:

rpm -qf /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_fzf
head -n 30 /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_fzf
fzf --version

If that file is actually upstream's initialization script, installed only as an autoloadable _fzf with no documented sourcing step or startup hook, your concern is reasonable. If it is a normal function for completing fzf's own options, requiring a separate opt-in for ssh **<TAB> is expected. I cannot determine which applies to your distribution without inspecting that packaged file.

References: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#setting-up-shell-integration and https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/blob/master/shell/completion.zsh

Disclosure: AI-assisted answer, checked against upstream documentation and initialization code; I have not tested your RHEL package.