Augment an existing completion function with my own

[dhalbert]

bash-completion supplies a make script with a completion function for the make command. For example, make <TAB> lists available targets in the Makefile. I want to preserve that functionality, and add an additional completion function, which is specific to my build environment, something like make SOMEVAR=<optprefix><tab>.

I already have the function working. But if I complete -F _myfunction make, then I override the one supplied by bash-completion. How can I cascade or augment the existing one so that both work? Thanks. I've looked here and in various stackexchange sites, to no avail.

[akinomyoga]

You can call the bash-completion function at the beginning of _myfunction.

# For bash-completion >= 2.12
_comp_load make
_myfunction() {
  _comp_cmd_make "$@"

  # ...

  COMPREPLY+=(...)
}
complete -F _myfunction make

# For bash-completion < 2.12
__load_completion make
_myfunction() {
  _make "$@"

  # ...

  COMPREPLY+=(...)
}
complete -F _myfunction make

[dhalbert]

Thank you very much. I had to use __load_completion, based on the version of `bash-completion in Ubuntu 24.04.

One mistake I made initially applying this was to put my augmentation script into ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/make. That doesn't work because then __load_completion finds my script first, based on search order, and loads it again. The bash-completion script for make is therefore skipped. So I put my script elsewhere and sourced it "manuallyin.bashrc`.