Help with configuring completions

[Jai-JAP]

Currently completions return the path completions by default when there are no possible completions available (excluding flags) as shown in the below image

How do i disable this behaviour and stop completions in this case (or just complete the flags if - is passed as current input word)?

[Jai-JAP]

Another small thing, the menucomplete gives a visual alert when menucomplete page changes on the top right as shown in the below image.

Is it possible to customise its position and behaviour? If so how?

[akinomyoga]

It is shown by ble.sh's feature called vbell (visible-bell). It can be configured through the following options:

$ bleopt vbell_@
bleopt vbell_align=right
bleopt vbell_default_message=' Wuff, -- Wuff!! '
bleopt vbell_duration=2000

Also, the colors and styles can be configured through the following faces:

$ ble-face vbell@
ble-face vbell=reverse
ble-face vbell_erase=bg=252
ble-face vbell_flash=fg=green,reverse

For details, please refer to the respective sections:

• bleopt vbell_align ... this is the position
• ble-face vbell
• ble-face vbell_flash
• ble-face vbell_erase

Note: vbell_duration and vbell_default_message are not used for the completion menu.

[Jai-JAP]

The vbell persists even after the menu has been closed, i think this should close with the menu itself

[Jai-JAP]

Any solution for this?

[akinomyoga]

There is no such option at present. I'll check the codebase if it would make sense to erase the menu or to offer an option to control it. If the complication of the codebase by the addition of the feature wouldn't be too big, I'll add the feature.

[Jai-JAP]

Another annoyance, the sudo command doesn't provide proper completions, pressing tab after sudo <command> gives me completions for sudo instead of the command itself.

And also tab after sudo doest give all commands, for instance if I do sudo fw TAB then it doesn't give me fwupdmgr and related tools which I have installed.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c3ba24d9-e9d2-4a22-bf3a-aafd179cae60

@akinomyoga Sorry for the ping, but please help me configure this annoyances.

[Jai-JAP]

[akinomyoga]

What is the expected behavior? I checked the behavior, but in the first place, there don't seem to be any completion settings for efibootmgr.

• In fact, without ble.sh, nothing completes with efibootmgr -[TAB] or sudo efibootmgr -[TAB].
• With ble.sh, since no completions are generated for efibootmgr by the programmable completion, ble.sh next attempts to parse the man page to extract the option names using the current command name (i.e., efibootmgr for efibootmgr -[TAB], and sudo for sudo efibootmgr -[TAB]). This man page extraction is not prepared for each specific command, so it doesn't know what sudo does. As a result, it simply uses the command name in the shell syntax as the entry name of the man page, and it generates the sudo options for sudo efibootmgr -[TAB]. This is the expected behavior, and there is currently no plan for ble.sh to offer a dictionary for how the arguments should be interpreted for every single command (including sudo). The precise generation of the options for each command is out of ble.sh's scope and is supposed to be provided by the programmable completion for efibootmgr.

If you don't like this behavior, you can implement the proper completion generation for efibootmgr by yourself, or you may turn off the completion by the approach described in #551 (comment) or #551 (reply in thread).

[Jai-JAP]

IMO the expected behaviour is that the efibootmgr generated completions should be available for sudo efibootmgr as well. This simply implies that both the completions should be the same i.e; the one generated from the man page in this case.

It should not show sudo completions after a command is specified in sudo <cmd> as they will not work. sudo ARGS should be specified before the command itself

[akinomyoga]

In short, ble.sh doesn't intend to offer completions for specific commands. I won't implement logics specific to sudo (or whatever commands except for Bash builtins) in ble.sh. It should be implemented by external projects dedicated for bash completion settings.

[akinomyoga]

The upstream efibootmgr project seems to be https://github.com/rhboot/efibootmgr, where completion settings do not seem to be offered. In this case, what we can do is to ask the upstream repository about if they can add completion settings, or to include the settings in the bash-completion framework.

[akinomyoga]

Somehow, I missed this discussion.

How do i disable this behaviour and stop completions in this case (or just complete the flags if - is passed as current input word)?

I assume you use the latest version of bash-completion. In this case, you can add the following setting to disable the default completions:

# blerc
_comp_cmd_reboot() {
  _comp_complete_minimal "$@"
  compopt +o ble/default # disable ble.sh's default completion
  compopt +o bashdefault # disable Bash's default completion
  compopt +o default     # disable Readline's default completion
}
complete -F _comp_cmd_reboot reboot

[Jai-JAP]

In this case the completions are broken completely,

Before

With the above code added to blerc
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b5f2aaf5-8264-4151-a279-fee9f9ca06f9

[Jai-JAP]

Same completions without any arguments, are as below. It essentially did the reverse of the intended. I want to disable directories completion popping up everywhere even where it doesn't in default bash without ble.sh

Before

After

[akinomyoga]

That is intentional. This is the same as efibootmgr, where no completion settings are provided.

First of all, ble.sh is not responsible for the generation of the filenames and directory names. It is generated by the bash-completion framework as a fallback. This can be confirmed by checking the completion setting as

$ complete -p reboot    # <- after an attempt of completion for "reboot"
complete -F _comp_complete_minimal reboot

The above setting is provided by bash-completion, and _comp_complete_minimal triggers Bash/Readline's default completion, where filenames are generated. Have you checked the behavior with bash-completion but without ble.sh? This is the result without ble.sh:

which is consistent with what you obtained with the last settings.

[akinomyoga]

Also for the reboot command, we want to ask the upstream project that implements the reboot command about whether they add completion settings, or we would add settings in the bash-completion project. In the case of reboot, I think it would make sense to include the completion setting in the bash-completion project because different operating systems provide different reboot commands, and there is no central repository for all reboot.

[Jai-JAP]

First of all, ble.sh is not responsible for the generation of the filenames and directory names. It is generated by the bash-completion framework as a fallback.

This makes things clear, thanks for helping.