[Bash-completion-devel] [patch review] Add --rsyncable to gzip completion

[Ville Skyttä]

On Saturday 17 January 2009, Santiago M. Mola wrote:
> revno: 1252
> committer: Ville Skyttä <ville.skytta at iki.fi>
> branch nick: current
> timestamp: Thu 2009-01-15 00:38:07 +0200
> message:
>   Add --rsyncable to gzip completion (not in upstream gzip (yet?), but
> commonly patched into various distros' packages).
>
> We should not be adding completion non-upstream things. That patch would
> be better in distros who have the --rsyncable option for gzip.
> Otherwise, people using upstream version are getting wrong completion.

I'd argue the most usual source of incorrect completions are different options 
in different upstream software releases - options etc get 
added/removed/renamed all the time, and for many "same" commands there are 
even different upstreams.  It's impossible to get everything right in every 
possible scenario in a project like bash-completion, and thus I think the 
project should focus on practical portability instead of strict "only 
upstream" or strictly lowest common denominator policy.  In my opinion 
adding --rsyncable to gzip was practical based on checking the Linux distros 
I have access to or otherwise looked at their sources (Fedora, CentOS, 
openSUSE, Mandriva, Debian; all of these had --rsyncable).

FWIW, just a couple of examples of support in one form or another for other 
non-upstream options discussed or applied during the last week or so which I 
think are practical enough to be applied at least for now:

Debian specific (?) -l special case for man(1): -l either does not exist (for 
example man 1.6f which is the latest version for that upstream, and used by 
e.g. Fedora, Mandriva, CentOS (and I suppose also FreeBSD)) or means 
apparently something entirely different (for example Solaris, Tru64).

--suggests, --enhances support for rpm(8): these do not exist in rpm from 
rpm.org, but I gather do exist in rpm from rpm5.org (different upstreams with 
differing opinions which is the "official" rpm).