feat: completions command

[pd93]

Fixes #293

A draft PR based off this comment.

It's a pretty simple implementation. We have a new internal package called completion. This will embed any files in the internal/completion/templates/* directory and when the --completion <shell> flag is given, it will read the template with the corresponding template name, insert any template values and return the string which will then be output to stdout.

I've added a task.tpl.example file to illustrate how you would add a completions script. I'm not super proficient with completion scripts (I have a bit of experience with ZSH), so maybe if we're happy with this approach, we can merge with no templates and slowly migrate the old scripts to this new concept.

I wasn't sure what the best format for the template filenames was. I think we want them to end with .zsh/.bash etc so we get syntax highlighting, but I also added the .tpl prefix so that anyone using a go templating extension/plug could add .tpl.bash etc to the list of templated files without also targeting normal .bash files. Let me know if you think there's a better way?

[pd93]

Pushed a change to add the current completion scripts to the templates.

I've also added some fixtures for the scripts so that its easier to review changes when editing the templates. Simply run task gen:fixtures to update them.

I've been thinking a little bit about the implementation and we have the following decision to make:

• Template includes Tasks in compilation and is static. This means task --completion <shell> must be called every time the user pushes TAB etc. However, it is easier to loop over tasks and their properties (such as aliases).
• Template only includes tool-level info (i.e. flags) and not task-level info (i.e. Task names). This means it can be called once on shell startup and we will fallback to task --list-all --silent for fetching tasks inside the completion script as we do currently. We'd need to do some string parsing to get format the tasks and it will be more difficult to fetch task data (like aliases)

I'm really undecided between the two. It might be possible to get the best of both worlds by creating a 2nd template layer. i.e. task --completion-tasks <shell> which would essentially replace task --list-all in the 2nd option.

Either way, this can be merged as-is and the rest of these decisions can be made in future PRs.

Also, apologies in advance, but I'm going to be annoying and tag some of the users who have contributed to completions in the past. It would be great to get your perspectives on the changes too.

@carlsmedstad @MarioSchwalbe @patricksjackson @mymmrac @notnmeyer @shilangyu @paulvarache @trim21 @philpennock

[trim21]

I'm a windows user and current powershell completion script (backed by task --list-all) already works perfect fine for me. So I don't have a opinion on this.

and I agree your opinion on cobra， cobra assume your cli have sub commands, which task doesn't. So migrating to cobra just for auto completion is not a good idea.

[trim21]

I just submit a PR for powershell completion, and I find that parsing json in powershell may cause feelable delay. So now I'm not very sure about option 1.

Are you suggesting to handle current user input (filter flags/ tasks) in go instead of shell? Or just generate a script with full tasks list, then filter them in shell?

---

Generating flags is always a good idea.

[trim21]

I didn't follow the development and discussion, so I'm a little confused by this thread.

why

We'd need to do some string parsing to get format the tasks and it will be more difficult to fetch task data (like aliases)

and use sed/read in fish completion to fetch alias?

I think it's already covered by task --list-all --silent, there is no need for sed and yaml parsing.

Did I miss something here?

  generate:
    desc: Runs Go generate to create mocks
    aliases: [gen, g]

$ task  --list-all --silent
clean
default
generate
gen
g
...

Is this referring to support variable completion in the future?

[danquah]

Don't forget

• What do we do about the downstream packages that relies on https://github.com/go-task/task/tree/main/completion ?

If merged this would currently break at least go-task/homebrew-tap but probably also other downstream packages. The quick solution is to what you do with task generate:fixtures and then also update /completions or flip it around and use the compiled templates as the fixture. No matter what we should be aware that this introduces a new step in the release of Task.

With regards to the two other options I believe

• Template only includes tool-level info (i.e. flags) and not task-level info (i.e. Task names). This means it can be called once on shell startup and we will fallback to task --list-all --silent for fetching tasks inside the completion script as we do currently. We'd need to do some string parsing to get format the tasks and it will be more difficult to fetch task data (like aliases)

Is the way to go - it matches what we currently do. We can come up with some additional tricks to make completions even better in the future. Just getting the templating in place for now is a big win in my eyes.

I'll for sure take a crack at improving the bash completions when this is merged.

[pd93]

This PR has been open way too long 😆

If merged this would currently break at least go-task/homebrew-tap but probably also other downstream packages

This comment made me pause for a bit and I never came back to it. Now that I've finally had some time to think about it again, I've reviewed all the existing work here and have decided to dramatically strip back the scope of this PR. I think I was trying to solve too many problems at once. What I've decided to do instead:

• Scrap all the templating work (for now)
• Leave the existing completion scripts where they are so that nothing breaks
• Embed the current scripts into the built task binary
• Define a new API for outputting the current completion scripts via the task binary
• Deprecate the direct usage of the scripts in the completions/* directory

This will allow us to slowly migrate users and installers to use the new API without breaking anything today. In the future, when we are satisfied that nothing will break, we can then revisit how the scripts are generated without changing the API.

The API I have gone for is very similar to other modern CLI tools: task --completion <shell>. Most other CLIs would have a top-level command instead of a flag, but since Task's arguments are task names, this isn't possible.

I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone in this thread. Especially regarding the updated setup instructions since I'm not familiar with all shells (particularly Powershell). I've got it working nicely in fish and zsh so far 👍

[ccxuy]

which version contain this feature?

task --version
Task version: v3.38.0 (h1:O7kgA6BfwktXHPrheByQO46p3teKtRuq1EpGnFxNzbo=)

task --completion bash
.....
unknown flag: --completion
Failed at 177: task --completion bash

[vmaerten]

It's not released yet. I'll be in the next release (and we do not have ETA for this)

[yonas]

A few days later... :tada:

CHANGELOG.md v3.39.0 - 2024-09-07

Added a new --completion flag to output completion scripts for various shells (#293, #1157 by @pd93).

• This is now the preferred way to install completions.
• The completion scripts in the completion directory are now deprecated.