Unknown command: apropos

[MicaEcho]

If I wrote anything and press [TAB] I receive this output:

aafish: Unknown command: apropos
/usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_apropos.fish (line 51):
        apropos "$argv"
        ^~~~~~^     
in function '__fish_apropos' with arguments '^aa'  
        called on line 15 of file /usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_describe_command.fish 
in function '__fish_describe_command' with arguments 'aa'  
in command substitution    

I don't have "apropos" on my system and I don't want to install it.
it used to work fine, I just want the command list, how do I stop that error?

fish, version 3.7.1

[zanchey]

__fish_describe_command should just set up an empty function if apropos is not installed. I wonder why that is not happening.

Can you tell us how you installed fish and what platform you are using?

[krobelus]

what's the output of fish -c 'type -a apropos' fish -c 'fish_trace=1 __fish_describe_command aa' Your error can happen if you defined a function called "type", shadowing the builtin of the same name (this is discouraged because it causes confusion). We could add "type" to the list of reserved words that cannot be redefined. Not sure; I don't know much about what's the criteria. Or we could change "type" invocations to "builtin type" to work around it in our code.. but that won't fix third party code.

[MicaEcho]

__fish_describe_command should just set up an empty function if apropos is not installed. I wonder why that is not happening.

Can you tell us how you installed fish and what platform you are using?

I'm using Arch Linux, fish installed via pacman.

what's the output of

fish -c 'type -a apropos'

fish -c 'fish_trace=1 __fish_describe_command aa'

Your error can happen if you defined a function called "type",
shadowing the builtin of the same name (this is discouraged because it causes confusion).

We could add "type" to the list of reserved words that cannot be redefined.
Not sure; I don't know much about what's the criteria.

Or we could change "type" invocations to "builtin type" to work around
it in our code.. but that won't fix third party code.

$ fish -c 'type -a apropos'
type: Could not find 'apropos'

$ fish -c 'fish_trace=1 __fish_describe_command aa'
--> source /usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_describe_command.fish
----> if
----> type -q apropos
-----> function __fish_describe_command
-----> exit
-------> tmux detach -P
----> end if
----> function __fish_describe_command -d 'Command used to find descriptions for commands'
----> string escape --style=regex -- aa
---> set -l argv_regex aa
----> source /usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_apropos.fish
------> if
------> type -q apropos
-------> function __fish_apropos
-------> exit
---------> tmux detach -P
no current client
------> end if
-------> uname -sr
-------> string match -r \(Darwin\)\ \(\\d\\d\).
------> set -l sysver
------> if
-------> count
------> test 1 -eq 0 -a 0 -eq 3
------> else
-------> function __fish_apropos
------> end if
---> awk -v 'FS= +- +' \{\n\t\tsplit\(\$1,\ names,\ \",\ \"\)\;\n\t\tfor\ \(name\ in\ names\)\n\t\t\tif\ \(names\[name\]\ \~\ /^aa.\*\ \*\\\(\[18\]\\\)/\ \)\ \{\n\t\t\t\tsub\(\ \"\(\ \|\\t\)\*\\\\\(\[18\]\\\\\)\",\ \"\",\ names\[name\]\ \)\;\n\t\t\t\tsub\(\ \"\ \\\\\[.\*\\\\\]\",\ \"\",\ names\[name\]\ \)\;\n\t\t\t\tprint\ names\[name\]\ \"\\t\"\ \$2\;\n\t\t\t\}\n\t\}
---> __fish_apropos ^aa
-------> fish_command_not_found apropos ^aa
---------> __fish_default_command_not_found_handler apropos ^aa
------------> _ fish:\ Unknown\ command:\ \%s\\n
------------> string escape -- apropos
-----------> printf fish:\ Unknown\ command:\ \%s\\n apropos
fish: Unknown command: apropos
/usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_apropos.fish (line 51): 
        apropos "$argv"
        ^~~~~~^
in function '__fish_apropos' with arguments '^aa'
        called on line 15 of file /usr/share/fish/functions/__fish_describe_command.fish
in function '__fish_describe_command' with arguments 'aa'

the command with trace is also detaching my tmux session.
I have an alias for the "exit" command that runs tmux detach instead, fish shouldn't be using the builtin exit instead?
I don't know what changed, these problems appeared after the last update

[MicaEcho]

Your error can happen if you defined a function called "type",
shadowing the builtin of the same name (this is discouraged because it causes confusion).

I forgot to mention, I don't have a function called type defined

$ type -a apropos
type: Could not find 'apropos'

[zanchey]

I have an alias for the "exit" command that runs tmux detach instead, fish shouldn't be using the builtin exit instead?

Functions shadow builtins (otherwise there would be no way to change the behaviour of the builtin), so that might be causing your problems.

[MicaEcho]

I have an alias for the "exit" command that runs tmux detach instead, fish shouldn't be using the builtin exit instead?

Functions shadow builtins (otherwise there would be no way to change the behaviour of the builtin), so that might be causing your problems.

I mean, if I run on my terminal "builtin exit", I can still use the builtin. Couldn't fish do the same to prevent this kind of issue, since it makes no sense to the internal functions to use a user-defined custom alias instead the builtin command?

[mqudsi]

We'd have to use builtin foo for every single invocation of a builtin or command in every single function or completion that ships with fish. And it would prevent the user from overriding the behavior of things, for example, someone could want to shadow uname to pretend their system is something else for whatever reason they have. Using command uname would prevent that flexibility, add a huge maintenance burden, etc all to prevent an issue in case someone chooses to create a function called uname that does something entirely different.

[MicaEcho]

We'd have to use builtin foo for every single invocation of a builtin or command in every single function or completion that ships with fish.

I don't know much about the fish/completions internals, but in my point of view, it should be done for private methods (not all methods). Example, all these scripts starting with __* are part of the fish implementation not intended to be modified and are already assuming the default behavior of the command, so it should be written in a unbreakable way.

In my case, I figure out it started happening cause I recently defined fish as my default shell using chsh.
The need of exit alias is because it's impossible to remember when I'm on a local session or ssh session.
If I write exit, it end up killing everything, a pain in the neck.

So my only option is to write a dummy function for __fish_describe_command? that is ugly af.
From my [user] perspective, all I see is that other shells can do it without workarounds, and fish not. Example, bash don't uses user alias defined on .bashrc when running any script. same for zsh, csh, tcsh, dash...

[zanchey]

see also #3000, #3013, #3319 where we have gone back and forth on this a lot

Unfortunately the exit function you have written will also break when you source scripts (which can happen in completions as well), so unless you are willing to move to another name you will need a workaround. I have been thinking about this but not able to come up with something yet. Perhaps someone else has an idea.