Getting error: _get_comp_words_by_ref: command not found

Question

Getting error: _get_comp_words_by_ref: command not found

maep-- opened this issue 5 years ago · comments

Following the setup instructions, I got this error when pressing tab:
_get_comp_words_by_ref: command not found

I managed to fix it by putting source /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh before sourcing fuzzy_bash_completion. I'm running Debian 9.8. Maybe you could put a note about that in the readme.

Mitchel Humpherys · Answer 1 · Thu Feb 21 2019 09:07:55 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

The README did already mention bash-completion as a pre-requisite. I've added another sentence that should make it clear that you not only have to install it but also enable it as well. LMK what you think.

maep-- · Answer 2 · Fri Feb 22 2019 07:33:45 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Thanks. To elaborate, I wasn't aware that bash-completion needed to be explicitly activated. I thought simply having it installed was enough.

Mitchel Humpherys · Answer 3 · Fri Feb 22 2019 07:50:13 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Yeah that's a pretty common misunderstanding with the bash-completion package... To make matters worse, some distros do automatically search for it in their system-wide rc scripts and enable it if it's installed. Sounds like Debian 9.8 doesn't do that. We can't really describe how to install and enable it on each and every distro so hopefully that subtle additional note in the README will be enough to get people unstuck...

Thanks for the report and feedback.