gcloud-cli: zsh completion symlink in site-functions doesn't follow #compdef convention

[andrewhsu]

Description

The gcloud-cli cask symlinks completion.zsh.inc into site-functions as _google_cloud_sdk:

/opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions/_google_cloud_sdk -> /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/gcloud-cli/561.0.0/google-cloud-sdk/completion.zsh.inc

However, this file doesn't follow the zsh completion convention that compinit expects for files in site-functions/. It uses bashcompinit and bash-style complete commands instead of starting with a #compdef header:

# What the file has:
autoload -U +X bashcompinit && bashcompinit
...
complete -o nospace -o default -F _python_argcomplete "gcloud"

# What compinit expects for autoloading:
#compdef gcloud bq gsutil

For comparison, a properly formatted completion file like _gh:

#compdef gh
compdef _gh gh

Impact

Running compinit finds the file but doesn't know which commands it provides completions for, so gcloud <Tab> doesn't work. Users must source the file explicitly as a workaround:

source /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions/_google_cloud_sdk

This is the same underlying issue as #143596, which was closed without addressing the convention mismatch.

Possible fixes

1. Don't symlink completion.zsh.inc into site-functions/ — it's not a compinit-compatible file. Instead, document that users should source it directly.
2. Add a thin wrapper in site-functions/_google_cloud_sdk that has the proper #compdef gcloud bq gsutil header and sources the upstream file.

Environment

macOS, Homebrew, gcloud-cli 561.0.0, zsh 5.9

[SMillerDev]

Have you tried raising this with Google to get it fixed? That might be the nicest solution for everyone.

[andrewhsu]

Have you tried raising this with Google to get it fixed? That might be the nicest solution for everyone.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/501612370