zsh completion for tarsnap 1.0.37

[vapniks]

archive names may optionally be completed by setting the archivefile variable at the top of the file

[gperciva]

Could you add some hint for zsh users as to how they'd use this file? i.e. should it be copied into /usr/share/zsh/completion/ , or /etc/zsh/, or $HOME/.zsh/ ?

[vapniks]

done

[gperciva]

Could this file be put into misc/zsh_completion/_tarsnap ? Or some other filename, but definitely within misc/ and beginning with zsh.

[vapniks]

I'll leave that to you :)

[gperciva]

A little nitpicky, but could this variable be renamed to something like archivelist_file ? (or something similar, if underscores aren't allowed in zsh)
My first impression was that this was supposed to be a list of archives; I had to read the comment twice before I understood that it was supposed to point to a text file which contains a list of archive names.

[vapniks]

done

[gperciva]

Hmm, if I enter zsh and type:

% tarsnap --hu[TAB]

(trying to get --humanize-numbers), it turns into

% tarsnap --nuke

Does zsh autocompletion work very differently than bash's? I also tried

% tarsnap -c --hu[TAB]

and couldn't get it to complete --humanize-numbers (or --dry-run) in there.

[vapniks]

That's because I used the SYNOPSIS in the man page for tarsnap as a guide. The --humanize-numbers option is only available for the -c, -d, -t and -x commands, after --keyfile, --cachdir, and -f have been specified.

[gperciva]

Hmm, I see what you mean; the SYNOPSIS might be a bit misleading. Far below, in the EXAMPLES section, it states

Note that the --keyfile and --cachedir options can be specified via the
tarsnap.conf(5) configuration file, in which case they may be omitted
from the command line.

In addition, the -f option can be mixed in with the other [options]. It can even be omitted if --dry-run is specified.

Yes, I definitely think that the man page is misleading. I'll revise it and discuss with @cperciva.

[vapniks]

I did make --keyfile and --cachedir optional, but -f is currently required. I could easily change this though.

[gperciva]

-f is not actually mutually exclusive with --dry-run; there's nothing wrong with doing

tarsnap --humanize-numbers -f foo --dry-run -c --print-stats ~/backup

I'm still concerned about not being able to put options in whatever order I want. Again, writing

tarsnap --hu[TAB]

comes up with tarsnap --nuke, which is not at all what I was typing! I wonder if the auto-correct script is trying to be "too smart".

[vapniks]

It's because it needs to see a mode option first. I can easily change it so that the order doesn't matter, but personally I prefer it that way since it makes it easier for me to remember the modes and important options (there are a lot of options that I will probably never use).

[vapniks]

Actually, just realised that the first option needs to be a mode so that it knows what other options to offer (unless you don't mind all options being available for all modes).

[cperciva]

@gperciva Is there a reason this is still open? I don't know if this was included in other changes.

[gperciva]

There's kind-of a reason. I have a branch which parses the man page and automatically adds args to the bash completion file (which prompted the recent #403 and #404). I'm now working on extending that to cover the zsh completion file. (Although I think I'll just have it give a warning, rather than attempting to automatically edit the file, since the zsh one also includes short doc strings.)

I do hope to resolve this within a couple of PRs.

[gperciva]

Hi @vapniks,

We now have a zsh completion file for tarsnap, added in #518. It's generated automatically from our man-page, so it should always be up-to-date.

I'm terribly sorry about the 5-year delay. This rarely made it to the top of my todo list, and I'm not very familiar with zsh so it took a while until I was happy with a solution.

I used your descriptions of options in this PR and rewrote them into 086c670. Thank you for your contribution! And sorry again for the delay.