Re: [PATCH/RFC] completion: complete all possible -no-<options>

[Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 7:03 PM, Andreas Heiduk <asheiduk@gmail.com> wrote:
> Am 08.05.2018 um 17:24 schrieb Duy Nguyen:
>> On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 7:36 AM, Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> wrote:
>>> I haven't looked at the implementation, so this may be an entirely
>>> stupid suggestion, but would it be possible to instead render the
>>> completions as?
>>>
>>>     % git checkout --<tab>
>>>     --[no-]conflict=                   --[no-]patch
>>>     --[no-]detach                      --[no-]progress
>>>     --[no-]ignore-other-worktrees      --[no-]quiet
>>>     --[no-]ignore-skip-worktree-bits   --[no-]recurse-submodules
>>>     --[no-]merge                       --theirs
>>>     --[no-]orphan=                     --[no-]track
>>>     --ours
>>>
>>> This would address the problem of the --no-* options taking double the
>>> screen space.
>>
>> It took me so long to reply partly because I remember seeing some guy
>> doing clever trick with tab completion that also shows a short help
>> text in addition to the complete words. I could not find that again
>> and from my reading (also internet searching) it's probably not
>> possible to do this without trickery.
>
> The fish-shell does something like that.
>
>     > git status --<tab here>
>     --branch  (Show the branch and tracking info even in short-format)
>     --help                       (Display the manual of a git command)
>     --ignore-submodules                 (Ignore changes to submodules)
>     --porcelain    (Give the output in a stable, easy-to-parse format)
>     --short                      (Give the output in the short-format)
>     --untracked-files              (The untracked files handling mode)
>
> Another tab will put a selection-cursor on the displayed list - you can
> navigate that list with Cursor-Up/Cursor-Down, select an entry and that
> entry will be inserted into the commandline. That selection process
> would be useless if the options are presented as "--[no-]x" because THAT
> cannot be inserted into the commandline without manual editing. And
> that's the point of the fast option selection process.

Good to know.

BTW I looked at the git.fish completion script [1] and see that recent
effort to help automate more in git-completion.bash might help there
too. I notice a lot of options and help text hard coded there, if
someone can explain to me how git.fish uses those, maybe I can change
git to export something suitable for git.fish to use too [2].

For example with latest git (in 'master') doing this

    ./git add --git-completion-helper

gives you the list of all options of "git add". Giving the help text
for each option is definitely possible (I just didn't see any use for
it until I looked at zsh/fish completion scripts) and maybe more in
the future.

[1] https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/blob/master/share/completions/git.fish
[2] But then if your script has to work with old git versions too then
this is a moot point.
-- 
Duy