Migration path for plugins that rely on completions/functions shipped with fish

[benedictleejh]

Sometime between fish 4.0.6 and 4.2.1, $fish_complete_path no longer included the the files inside the $__fish_data_dir/completions (/usr/share/fish/completions for me on openSUSE Tumbleweed. (I only discovered this issue on being upgraded to 4.2.1 by my package manager, so I do not know which is the first version that caused this issue.) This, unfortunately, broke one of my plugins which was relying on the internal git completion functions from fish.

Based on #11143, this seems to be an expected eventual state of affairs with the builtin completions being read directly from the binary, whether this change to $fish_complete_path is intended now or not. As such, I would like to know what the intended path forward is for relying on the functions from fish's included completions, since not all of them may be exposed normally (e.g. __fish_git_branches).

Thank you.

[faho]

See 5cae67a.

If your thing needs specific completions to be loaded, run something like complete --do-complete="git " &>/dev/null for the git completions. This will work whether the file is embedded or not, and was also mentioned in the release notes.

If your thing needs a specific internal function to be loaded, run it (like that cheesy __fish_npm_helper thing we have).

If all else fails, run status get-file completions/git.fish | source to force it.

[benedictleejh]

After testing things for a bit, it seems I'll need to do status get-file completions/git.fish | source to make things work right now, because my completions are extending the git completions, and I need to name my completion git.fish in order to add on to git completions.

My understanding is that having the same filename as an internal completion overrides it, due to the autoloading priority, and doing complete --do-complete="git " &>/dev/null will trigger my own completions instead of the internal completions. Perhaps a better way is needed in the future for extending completions (e.g. like in git-flow) so we do not need to rely on status get-file (which, going by the documentation, isn't really intended for userland use), but I will defer to fish's maintainers on such a design, as I currently have no opinions on how it should look like.

Thanks for the quick reply, and I'll consider my question answered and close the issue.

[krobelus]

I need to name my completion git.fish in order to add on to git completions

No. You can put your additions anywhere such as in ~/.config/fish/config.fish.
Using status get-file here is hacky.

[faho]

You can't if you want them autoloaded when completing git, and status get-file is fine.

I'm unsure why you're so eager to declare it not for use.