Aliases & completions

Aliases

Global, or scoped to a package:

aliases:
  ll: ls -alh
  gs: git status

packages:
  - name: kubectl
    from: apt
    aliases:
      k: kubectl
      kgp: kubectl get pods

A package’s aliases live with the package, so dropping it takes them with it. Global ones become a single Bedouin-owned block.

Rendering is per shell, because the syntax genuinely differs — fish’s alias defines a function and takes words rather than an = pair:

Shell	Line
zsh, bash	alias k='kubectl'
fish	alias k 'kubectl'

Values are quoted properly, including the awkward case: a posix shell cannot escape ' inside '…', so Bedouin closes, emits an escaped quote, and reopens. These land in a file your shell evaluates, so the quoting matters more than it looks.

Completions

packages:
  - name: kubectl
    from: apt
    completions:
      generate: ["kubectl", "completion", "{{ shell.name }}"]

generate is argv, run at apply time after the package is installed, and its stdout is written to your shell’s completions directory.

Shell	Path	Wiring
zsh	{rc_dir}/completions/_{name}	added to fpath
bash	{rc_dir}/completions/{name}.bash	sourced
fish	~/.config/fish/completions/{name}.fish	native

Why this is allowed when plan-time scripts are not

Bedouin refuses to run config-supplied code during plan, because on a fresh machine such a script runs before anything is installed — so its fallback is always the real value, and the config’s most important number ends up hidden behind a decorative key.

Neither applies here. This runs during apply, after the tool it invokes exists, and it produces file content — the same category as rendering a template. It goes through the same argv-only path as every other step, so no shell ever sees it, and the output is written, never executed.

Drift coverage is partial, and says so. The item is addressed on the command, so editing generate: re-runs it, and a package upgrade re-runs it too. Whether re-running would now produce different output cannot be known without running it, which plan does not do. doctor will report a hand-edited completions file, but not a merely stale one.