Provide option to disable autocompletion

[NCC1701M]

Which @angular/* package(s) are relevant/related to the feature request?

No response

Description

If you developing an angular web app in an dev container every time the container is created or rebuild and you are running the ng command for the first time, the angular cli asks:

? Would you like to enable autocompletion? This will set up your terminal so pressing TAB while typing Angular CLI commands will show possible options and autocomplete arguments. (Enabling autocompletion will modify
configuration files in your home directory.)

You can activate this "feature" but there is no way to disable it proactive.

You could run the command ng config -g cli.completion.prompted truebut if this is the first execution of the angular cli this only lead to the question if I want to enable autocompletion. So this isn't a solution.

Proposed solution

Because the user has the possibility to opt this feature out when the angular cli asks you if you want to enable the autocompletion and because there is an command to enable this without being asked there should also be to possibility to disable this feature with an command like

ng completion disable

Alternatives considered

As an alternative you could also make the global configuration settings

{
  "cli": {
    "completion": {
      "prompted": true
    }
  }
}

also available in the angular.json file.

[alan-agius4]

I seems that you are describing two problems here.

Disable autocomplete when it has been enabled
Currently indeed there is no command to disable autocomplete once enabled. This does require users to remove source <(ng completion script) from their bashrc or zshrc manually.

Disable ng completion question (Which appears to be the main reason why this issue has been opened)
In this case using ng config -g cli.completion.prompted true is the right approach.

[NCC1701M]

Disable autocomplete when it has been enabled Currently indeed there is no command to disable autocomplete once enabled. This does require users to remove source <(ng completion script) from their bashrc or zshrc manually.

Well this is something what should automatically be resolved with an command like ng completion disable

Disable ng completion question (Which appears to be the main reason why this issue has been opened) In this case using ng config -g cli.completion.prompted true is the right approach.

I disagree ng config -g cli.completion.prompted true isn't the right approach - apart from the fact that it does not working right now. The right approach would be to add two arguments to the ng completion command: enable and disable. This would enable anyone to turn the feature on or off at any time.

[alan-agius4]

I disagree ng config -g cli.completion.prompted true isn't the right approach - apart from the fact that it does not working right now.

No really following what what you mean that this does not work. I just tried it and it did work as expected.

[angular-robot]

This feature request is now candidate for our backlog! In the next phase, the community has 60 days to upvote. If the request receives more than 20 upvotes, we'll move it to our consideration list.

You can find more details about the feature request process in our documentation.

[NCC1701M]

No really following what what you mean that this does not work. I just tried it and it did work as expected.

Please take a look at the attached gif. This is a totally new devcontainer no ng command has been executed before. ng config will be the first run (like it would be if you are trying to automatically disable the feature).

On the left you will see the .angular-config.json on the right is the .bashrc file. I run the command and what happens is, that angular asks if I want to enable the autocomplete feature. That should not be happen, because so the feature can not be disabled without user interaction.

[alan-agius4]

Since there is no completion config and the terminal is interactive (supports TTY) you get prompted the question when you run ng config the first time.

If you want to disable user interactivity completely even when the terminal supports interactivity you can use NG_FORCE_TTY=false environment variable.

[NCC1701M]

But this could only be a workaround. A reasonable command to enable and disable the feature should be the solution.

[angular-robot]

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[angular-robot]

Thank you for submitting your feature request! Looks like during the polling process it didn't collect a sufficient number of votes to move to the next stage.

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[Dzivo]

I have the same problem everytime i rebuild container i forget that i have to enable this can we get option in the config

[dgp1130]

@alan-agius4, we have an exception to the analytics prompt for ng analytics disable. I'm wondering if we should do something like that for ng config for autocomplete?

I agree that running ng config cli.completion.prompted true is probably the right solution, we just need to make sure that doesn't itself prompt for completion setup.

NG_FORCE_TTY=false would probably work, but I don't think we generally consider that public API?

[dgp1130]

Another approach would be to actually set up autocompletion automatically in your container. We do check to see if it's set up before prompting, so I think if you just run ng completion first, it should hide this prompt. That also has the benefit that when working in the container you get the benefits of autocompletion.

[alan-agius4]

@alan-agius4, we have an exception to the analytics prompt for ng analytics disable. I'm wondering if we should do something like that for ng config for autocomplete?

That sounds reasonable, we just need to add config to:

angular-cli/packages/angular/cli/src/utilities/completion.ts

Line 133 in 7dc0049

if (command === 'update' || command === 'completion') {

NG_FORCE_TTY=false would probably work, but I don't think we generally consider that public API?

That is indeed correct.

[danscalamogna]

Maybe I am missing something. but why not just add the relevant line to the bashrc file in the docker build?

ARG USERNAME=myuser
RUN SOURCE="source <(ng completion script)" \
    && echo "$SOURCE" >> "/home/$USERNAME/.bashrc"

After rebuilding the container, I can run the cli commands without getting prompted and autocompletion is working.

[NCC1701M]

Maybe I am missing something. but why not just add the relevant line to the bashrc file in the docker build?

ARG USERNAME=myuser
RUN SOURCE="source <(ng completion script)" \
    && echo "$SOURCE" >> "/home/$USERNAME/.bashrc"

After rebuilding the container, I can run the cli commands without getting prompted and autocompletion is working.

I didn't want to enable autocompletion, I want a command to disable it

[danscalamogna]

My mistake - I thought you wanted to avoid being prompted every time you rebuilt the container. I did not realize you wanted to disable it altogether.