setup of bash-completion

• 20250427 Ryuichi Ueda
  • bluesky: @ueda.tech (https://bsky.app/profile/ueda.tech)

contents

• Linux
  • with command_not_found
• macOS

Linux (Ubuntu 24.04 or some versions near 24.04)

The following three lines are minimally required for bash-completion at the bottom of ~/.sushrc if you are using v1.1.4 or a version near v1.1.4.

source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
_comp_complete_load scp #for completion of rsync
complete -d cd

With this three lines, you can use completion for various commands including git.

The first line calls the main script of Bash-completion, which usually exists in /usr/share/bash-completion/. If you can't find the path, please search it by find and change the path.

The second line is required since a warning disturbs completion for rsync. This problem is solved if the completion function for scp is load. Since this happens owing to a bug of Rusty Bash, it should be removed someday. Someday...

The third line is also necessary to avoid a problem. This line resets the completion method for cd to directory completion since it was set to function completion after bash_completion for some reason.

with command_not_found

You can also use command_not_found. Before the three lines for bash-completion, please add the following function. The path should be changed if command-not-found script exists in the different directory.

command_not_found_handle() {
        if [ -e /usr/lib/command-not-found ] ; then
                /usr/lib/command-not-found -- "\$1"
        fi
}

For some reason, this definition has to be written BEFORE the call of bash-completion.

macOS (Sequoia 15.3.1 or some versions near it)

In macOS, the three lines for bash-completion are required at the bottom of ~/.sushrc. Moreover, we may have to install bash-completion by ourselves.

When you are using homebrew, you can do it with the following command.

🍣 brew install bash-completion

Then you can find bash_completion script in a directory under /opt/homebrew/Cellar like this.

🍣 find /opt/homebrew/Cellar/ | grep bash_completion$
/opt/homebrew/Cellar//bash-completion/1.3_3/etc/bash_completion

Please use the path found as above instead of the path used in the Linux example.