_split_longopt rename is breaking downstream (3rd party) completion scripts

[jasonkarns]

_split_longopt rename is breaking downstream (3rd party) completion scripts

[scop]

JFYI/aside rg 3rd party loader in #1148

[akinomyoga]

The function was removed in d659507

[akinomyoga]

FWIW, i manually edited ag's completion script to use _comp__split_longopt instead, and all is well.

_comp__split_longopt is not a part of public API and can be removed in the future at any time.

So i think the real question is a matter of "public api management" and "semver".

Any functions and variables whose name contains __ as a substring are not public stable interfaces and considered subject to change.

• bash-completion/doc/api-and-naming.md at master · scop/bash-completion
• #537

For the semver, we might have kept the old names.

I actually had a doubt about removing the old names even if they become a part of private APIs. But I haven't tried to keep it because a reasoning was given in the commit message, and also _split_longopt was technically not a public API because we hadn't specified the range of the public API at all until 2.11.

[akinomyoga]

I've checked the ag completion. The ag completion seems to be based on bash-completion 1 API, which is the reason that it directly depends on _split_longopt. The ag completion also depends on the API _get_cword, which is explicitly deprecated in bash-completion 2.0.

• In bash-completion 2 API, from the beginning, _split_longopt has been an internal function that is not supposed to be called by completion functions for specific commands. The feature provided by _split_longopt was switched to the -s option of _init_completion in bash-completion v1.90. That was made by commit a54857c 11 years ago.
• Another function _get_cword that the ag completion uses was explicitly marked as @deprecated in bash-completion v1.2 by commit a8dd58c 14 years ago.

I think the ag completion needs to switch to the bash-completion 2 API.

[akinomyoga]

I thought about submitting a PR to the upstream ag, but the mentioned repository https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher seems stale; there doesn't seem to be any activities for four years. Are there any repository of ag that is actively maintained?

Instead, there seem to be many alternative tools [1]. For example, the latest version of ripgrep (rg 14.0.0) seems to offer a completion setting for Bash [2].

• [1] ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift} - Andrew Gallant's Blog
• [2] ripgrep/FAQ.md at master · BurntSushi/ripgrep