bash-completion.el defines dynamic completion hooks for shell-mode and shell-command prompts that are based on bash completion.
You will need shell-command.el to get tab completion in the minibuffer. See http://www.namazu.org/~tsuchiya/elisp/shell-command.el
Bash completion for emacs:
- is aware of bash builtins, aliases and functions
- does file expansion inside of colon-separated variables and after redirections (> or <)
- escapes special characters when expanding file names
- is configurable through programmable bash completion
When the first completion is requested in shell model or a shell command, bash-completion.el starts a separate bash process. Bash-completion.el then uses this process to do the actual completion and includes it into Emacs completion suggestions.
A simpler and more complete alternative to bash-completion.el is to run a bash shell in a buffer in term mode(M-x `ansi-term'). Unfortunately, many Emacs editing features are not available when running in term mode. Also, term mode is not available in shell-command prompts.
-
copy bash-completion.el into a directory that's on Emacs load-path
-
add this into your .emacs file:
(autoload 'bash-completion-dynamic-complete "bash-completion" "BASH completion hook") (add-hook 'shell-dynamic-complete-functions 'bash-completion-dynamic-complete) (add-hook 'shell-command-complete-functions 'bash-completion-dynamic-complete)
or simpler, but forces you to load this file at startup:
(require 'bash-completion)
(bash-completion-setup)
- reload your .emacs (M-x `eval-buffer') or restart
Once this is done, use as usual to do dynamic completion from shell mode or a shell command minibuffer, such as the one started for M-x `compile'. Note that the first completion is slow, as emacs launches a new bash process.
You'll get better results if you turn on programmable bash completion. On Ubuntu, this means running:
sudo apt-get install bash-completion
and then adding this to your .bashrc:
. /etc/bash_completion
Right after enabling programmable bash completion, and whenever you make changes to you .bashrc, call `bash-completion-reset' to make sure bash completion takes your new settings into account.
Loading /etc/bash_completion often takes time, and is not necessary in shell mode, since completion is done by a separate process, not the process shell-mode process.
To turn off bash completion when running from emacs but keep it on for processes started by bash-completion.el, add this to your .bashrc:
if [[ ( -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" || "$EMACS_BASH_COMPLETE" = "t" ) &&\
-f /etc/bash_completion ]]; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi
Emacs sets the environment variable INSIDE_EMACS to the processes started from it. Processes started by bash-completion.el have the environment variable EMACS_BASH_COMPLETE set to t.
Using a separate process for doing the completion has several important disadvantages:
-
bash completion is slower than standard emacs completion
-
the first completion can take a long time, since a new bash process needs to be started and initialized
-
the separate process is not aware of any changes made to bash in the current buffer. In a standard terminal, you could do:
$ alias myalias=ls $ myal<TAB>and bash would propose the new alias. Bash-completion.el cannot do that, as it is not aware of anything configured in the current shell. To make bash-completion.el aware of a new alias, you need to add it to .bashrc and restart the completion process using `bash-completion-reset'.
bash-completion.el is quite sensitive to the OS and BASH version. This package is known to work on the following environment:
- GNU Emacs 22.3.1 (Aquamacs 1.7)
- GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (OSX 10.5)
- GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (Ubuntu 8.04)
- GNU Emacs 23.0.94.1 (Ubuntu 8.10)
- GNU Emacs 24.1.1 (OSX 10.7)
- GNU Emacs 24.1.1 (OSX 10.8)
and using the following bash versions:
- BASH 3.2.17
- BASH 3.2.32
- BASH 3.2.39
bash-completion.el does not works on XEmacs.