Herein the a Bash completion script for Python's pip command.
At Build Better Python Tools (Hackathon), 2015-02-07, one table was looking at an update extension to pip. As part of this effort Charalampos (Harry) Papaloizou proposed creating a Bash completion script for pip and this sub-project is the result -- aided and abetted by Russel Winder.
Six hours to produce 5 lines of Bash script
However that was just the research and making a start, things have been and will continue to evolve.
- Clone this repository.
- Copy or link the bash script ot he appropriate place.
- Create the cache index of PyPI.
- Use.
In a suitable directory:
$ git clone https://github.com/russel/pip_bashcompletion.git pip_bashcompletion
In the pip_bashcompletion directory you will find the pip bash script and the index generator Python script. You can either copy or symbolic link the bash script to install it. For global installation the target directory is /etc/bash_completion.d. For personal only installtion (more likely), the target directory is ~/bash_completion.d.
So for example, for a personal linked installation, assuming the Git repository is at /home/Git/pip_bashcompletion:
$ cd ~/bash_completion.d
$ ln -s /home/Git/pip_bashcompletion/pip
PyPI has more than 55,000 packages so getting the list from PyPI for each completion action would definitely be a ((very,) very,) very bad idea. Therefore the package list needs to be cached locally. This means iut will need updating (manually for the moment, sorry) on a regular basis to ensure it is up-to-date. The pip_index_gen.py script does all that is necessary to get the package list and output it to standard output. To create, or update, the cache:
python pip_index_gen.py >> ~/.pip_index
No instruction should be needed for this phase. But remember to update the package cache from time to time.
Completion is only undertaken on the install command.
Immediate next step deal with command completion.
This work is licenced under the MIT licence.