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

[Freddy Vulto]

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

> > 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
> 
> Any reason for this?
> Since those are "helper functions", I suppose they might as well go where
> comp_include is defined (i.e. I don't think you define comp_include in each
> completion file) [0]

Within bash_completion_lib, the function `comp_include' resides in the
file `completionrc', which is loaded the first time a completion is
invoked - typically when TAB is pressed.  To prevent `completionrc' from
growing ever larger as completions keep getting added to bash-completion,
I decided to move all shared helper functions to an `include'
subdirectory.  Completions can include shared helper functions with the
function-call `comp_include [FILE]...'.  This prevents the bash
environment from becoming cluttered with unused shared bash-completion
helper functions.

One might argue that common functions like `_filedir' should always be
available without a call to `comp_include', but I think that as
development continues (e.g. bash-4), helper functions come and go and
including them specific, eases maintenance.

Note that at the moment (bash_completion_lib-1.2.8), `completionrc' is
still containing helper functions but I'm planning to move them all to the
main `include' subdirectory (issue #30). Also, `comp_include' is only
looking at $COMP_DIR/include but `comp_include' is going to look at each
$COMP_PATH/include directory (issue #40).

It looks like the main `include' directory is going to contain these
files:

_available_interfaces
_btdownload
_command
_comp_dpkg_installed_packages
comp_filedir_xspec
_configured_interfaces
_count_args
_dequote
_expand
_filedir
_get_cword
_gids
_ImageMagick
_java
_known_hosts
_longopt
_lvm
_mailman_lists
_modules
_perlmodules
_pids
_pg_databases
_pgids
_pg_users
_rl_enabled
_rpm_installed_packages
_services
_signals
_uids
_usergroup


Regards,
Freddy Vulto