[Bash-completion-devel] Mandriva handling of bash completion

[Freddy Vulto]

David Paleino <d.paleino <at> gmail.com> writes:

> Well.
> To start hacking on the fork, I'm going to create a separate bzr branch.
> Reading http://fvue.nl/wiki/Bash_completion_library , it seems pretty smart
> (really, loading completions only when needed is smarter than loading
> everything just using have())
> 
> I also really like the DejaGNU test suites -- we haven't anything like that in
> the old code, and would really need it.

Merging Debian-completion with bash-completion-lib is possible (and I'm in
favor).  Here're already a few things to consider:

1.  Completions reside in a somewhat arcane directory-structure:

   $ ls -1 completions
   complete
   complete-ant
   complete-cc
   complete-cd
   complete-linux
   complete-nohostcomplete
   complete -o default
   complete -o default -o filenames
   complete -o default -o nospace
   complete -o dirnames
   complete -o filenames
   complete -o filenames -o nospace
   complete -o nospace
   complete-restrict-by-extension
   complete-tar

For reasons see:
http://www.fvue.nl/wiki/Bash_completion_library#Problem_2:_Completion_can.27t_access_completion_meta-options
It looks like this arcane directory structure can be overthrown as soon as
bash-4 which has a `compopt' builtin, but this is not helping bash-3 right now.


2.  Completion-*implementations* are only loaded when needed, but
completion-*definitions* are still installed for *all* commands (although being
the single small function `comp_load'):

   $ complete -p
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load reportbug
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load split
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load sed
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load ld
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load grep
   complete -o filenames -F comp_load java
   complete -o default -F comp_load _longopt-default
   complete -o default -F comp_load dict
   complete -F comp_load withlist
   ... (etc.)

For reasons see:
http://www.fvue.nl/wiki/Bash_completion_library#Problem_1:_No_.60catch-all.27_complete
It looks like Fedora has already patched bash with a catch-all completion
handler, which could in theory be set to "comp_load", but it also looks like the
catch-all handler is not going to be in upstream bash < 4.1 ...


3.  Completions reside in `completions' subdirectories of `$COMP_PATH' (a
colon-separated list of directories)


4.  Helper functions reside in a subdirectory `include'.  Helper functions can
be loaded by calling `comp_include', e.g.
./completions/complete-nohostcomplete/ssh does:

   comp_include _dequote _known_hosts


If merging proves difficult, maybe we can start with sharing the DejaGNU test
suite.  The test suite is already split into two parts: loading and completing,
and I'm already using the test suite for completions of both Debian-completion
and bash-completion-lib.  I think the best solution would be to extract the test
suite from bash-completion-lib and make it a separate project?

But maybe I'm jumping to a conclusion too fast.  If completion-lib merges with
Debian-completion maybe there's no need to keep a separate test suite.  Did I
already say I was in favor of merging and make completion loading 5-10 times
faster(!)

Freddy Vulto
http://fvue.nl/wiki/Bash_completion_library