How do I enable Zsh completions?

[mattmc3]

I have included zsh-users/zsh-completions in my .zsh_plugins.txt, but I still get no completions. How do I make completions work properly with antidote?

[mattmc3]

Antidote is a plugin manager, not a complete Zsh framework. If you have used Oh-My-Zsh or Prezto in the past, you might be used to a ton of out-of-the-box features like TAB completions. zsh-users/zsh-completions may seem like it does the job, but it still requires you to run compinit. To get completions working properly with an antidote-based Zsh config, you’ll need to run compinit yourself once you've finished building your fpath with the location of your _completions files, or simply use a completions plugin. The good news it that’s easy to do!

If you want to manually enable Zsh completions, add the following snippet to your .zshrc after you’ve loaded your plugins.

# .zshrc
autoload -Uz compinit && compinit

Or, you can also use a completion plugin. Some good ones are belak/zsh-utils and mattmc3/zephyr.

# .zsh_plugins.txt

# add more completions with plugins
zsh-users/zsh-completions

# now, use a plugin that runs compinit for you to initialize your completions
mattmc3/zephyr path:completion

[fdw]

According to your docs, I need to call autoload -Uz compinit && compinit after I've sourced the plugins. However, some of my plugins (https://github.com/gradle/gradle-completion, https://github.com/lukechilds/zsh-better-npm-completion) then throw an error command not found: compdef. Do I also need to call compinit before sourcing the plugins? That sounds weird, too...

[mattmc3]

In your case, where you have plugins that use #compdef, you may find it helpful to use a plugin that initializes your completions before those plugins per the second part of my answer above:

... # other plugins

# add plugins that use fpath for their completions BEFORE calling compinit
zsh-users/zsh-completions

# now, use a plugin that runs compinit for you to initialize your completions - there are a few
# mattmc3/zephyr path:completion
# zshzoo/compinit
belak/zsh-utils path:completion

# AFTER calling compinit, load completion plugins that use completion features directly (compdef)
gradle/gradle-completion
lukechilds/zsh-better-npm-completion

# You can still load other plugins after compinit, but be aware that any additional fpath modifications
# won't get picked up by the completion system now, and the compdump file will need rebuilt
zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search
...

You can read more about the Zsh completion system here.