gen-bash-completer - Generate bash completion script for a program
This document describes version 0.02 of gen-bash-completer (from Perl distribution App-GenBashCompleter), released on 2015-09-03.
% gen-bash-completer foo
If successful will produce _foo, which you can use for bash completion:
_foo
% complete -C _foo foo
Now you can use tab completion to complete foo:
foo
% foo <tab> % foo --op<tab>
and so on.
gen-bash-completer accepts a program/script file and uses various ways to try to generate bash completion script which you can later you in bash's complete -C to provide completion.
gen-bash-completer
complete -C
Currently the kinds of script it recognizes are:
Perl script which uses Getopt::Long::Complete or Perinci::CmdLine
This is script that can complete itself, because the said modules can handle bash completion for it. For these scripts, gen-bash-completer will just do nothing.
Perl script which uses Getopt::Long
For this kind of script, gen-bash-completer will load Getopt::Long, temporarily patch/trap the GetOptions function (as well as GetOptionsFromArray and GetOptionsFromString), and run the Perl script. The patched function will simply capture the options specification and exit. We then feed this specification to Getopt::Long::Complete.
GetOptions
GetOptionsFromArray
GetOptionsFromString
Others
Other methods will be added in the future, e.g. reading OPTIONS section in a Perl script's POD, support for other command-line option parsing modules, etc.
OPTIONS
* marks required options.
*
Set path to configuration file.
Can be specified multiple times.
Set configuration profile to use.
Do not use any configuration file.
Do not read environment for default options.
Set log level to debug (note: you also need to set LOG=1 to enable logging, or use DEBUG=1).
Set log level (note: you also need to set LOG=1 to enable logging).
Set log level to quiet (note: you also need to set LOG=1 to enable logging, or use QUIET=1).
Set log level to trace (note: you also need to set LOG=1 to enable logging, or use TRACE=1).
Set log level to info (note: you also need to set LOG=1 to enable logging, or use VERBOSE=1).
Choose output format, e.g. json, text.
Default value:
undef
Set output format to json.
When outputing as JSON, strip result envelope.
0
By default, when outputing as JSON, the full enveloped result is returned, e.g.:
[200,"OK",[1,2,3],{"func.extra"=>4}]
The reason is so you can get the status (1st element), status message (2nd element) as well as result metadata/extra result (4th element) instead of just the result (3rd element). However, sometimes you want just the result, e.g. when you want to pipe the result for more post-processing. In this case you can use `--naked-res` so you just get:
[1,2,3]
Display help message and exit.
Display program's version and exit.
Dist::Zilla::Plugin::GenBashCompleter
This script has shell tab completion capability with support for several shells.
To activate bash completion for this script, put:
complete -C gen-bash-completer gen-bash-completer
in your bash startup (e.g. ~/.bashrc). Your next shell session will then recognize tab completion for the command. Or, you can also directly execute the line above in your shell to activate immediately.
~/.bashrc
It is recommended, however, that you install shcompgen which allows you to activate completion scripts for several kinds of scripts on multiple shells. Some CPAN distributions (those that are built with Dist::Zilla::Plugin::GenShellCompletion) will even automatically enable shell completion for their included scripts (using shcompgen) at installation time, so you can immadiately have tab completion.
shcompgen
To activate tcsh completion for this script, put:
complete gen-bash-completer 'p/*/`gen-bash-completer`/'
in your tcsh startup (e.g. ~/.tcshrc). Your next shell session will then recognize tab completion for the command. Or, you can also directly execute the line above in your shell to activate immediately.
~/.tcshrc
It is also recommended to install shcompgen (see above).
For fish and zsh, install shcompgen as described above.
Specify additional command-line options
This script can read configuration file, which by default is searched at ~/.config/gen-bash-completer.conf, ~/gen-bash-completer.conf or /etc/gen-bash-completer.conf (can be changed by specifying --config-path). All found files will be read and merged.
~/.config/gen-bash-completer.conf
~/gen-bash-completer.conf
/etc/gen-bash-completer.conf
--config-path
To disable searching for configuration files, pass --no-config.
--no-config
Configuration file is in the format of IOD, which is basically INI with some extra features.
You can put multiple profiles in a single file by using section names like [profile=SOMENAME]. Those sections will only be read if you specify the matching --config-profile SOMENAME.
[profile=SOMENAME]
--config-profile SOMENAME
List of available configuration parameters:
format (see --format) input (see --input) log_level (see --log-level) naked_res (see --naked-res) output (see --output) overwrite (see --overwrite)
Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/App-GenBashCompleter.
Source repository is at https://github.com/perlancar/perl-App-GenBashCompleter.
Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=App-GenBashCompleter
When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.
perlancar <perlancar@cpan.org>
This software is copyright (c) 2015 by perlancar@cpan.org.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
To install App::GenBashCompleter, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm App::GenBashCompleter
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install App::GenBashCompleter
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.