Enable bash-completion

[mc-butler]

Important

This issue was migrated from Trac:

Origin	https://midnight-commander.org/ticket/4080
Reporter	cri (cri@….org)

Would it be possible to enable bash-completion (https://github.com/scop/bash-completion) in the mc panels command line? Currently it only works when in the subshell (Ctrl-O).

[mc-butler]

Changed by cri (cri@….org) on May 9, 2020 at 15:58 UTC (comment 1)

To be extra-clear, I mean what in bash(1) is called "Programmable Completion", usually enabled by sourcing /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion (I even tried doing it explicitely on the mc command line widget but no effect).

I guess it's a matter of adding support for it in lib/widget/input_complete.c, right? Do you think this is feasible?

[mc-butler]

Changed by cri (cri@….org) on Dec 3, 2020 at 15:04 UTC (comment 2)

Ping. Any hints? I'd be glad to help with this if anyone could point me in the right direction...

[mc-butler]

Changed by ossi (@ossilator) on Dec 3, 2020 at 15:41 UTC (comment 3)

well, now that bi-directional syncing of the shell prompt was implemented, this might be even realistic.
mc would still have to catch and present the completion prompts generated by the shell, so this is likely going to be a non-trivial amount of work.
but then, given that the syncing is there now, the marginal gain of implementing this would be rather low - you can just turn off the panels for a moment to invoke the shell completion.

[mc-butler]

Changed by cri (cri@….org) on Dec 4, 2020 at 10:06 UTC (comment 3.4)

Replying to ossi:

well, now that bi-directional syncing of the shell prompt was implemented, this might be even realistic.

Oh, you mean #4114, right? That actually slightly improves the situation, thanks.

mc would still have to catch and present the completion prompts generated by the shell, so this is likely going to be a non-trivial amount of work.

:(

you can just turn off the panels for a moment to invoke the shell completion.

Uhm, I wonder if this can be somehow automated. I.e. pressing Tab (I redefined Tab for completion instead of Esc-Tab) on the panels command line would automatically switch to the subshell, pass the tab key to it, so that bash-completion would be invoked, and then go back to the panels after auto-completion is done. But I guess the last step is the trickiest, right? And maybe it would be visually uncomfortable, the eye should jump from the panels command line at bottom of the screen to the subshell command line at the top, and back...

[mc-butler]

Changed by zaytsev (@zyv) on Dec 5, 2020 at 15:57 UTC (comment 5)

Yeah, that's what is basically meant with non-trivial amount of work...