bash-completion.el defines dynamic completion hooks for shell-mode and shell-command prompts that are based on bash completion.

Bash completion for emacs:

• is aware of bash builtins, aliases and functions
• does file expansion inside of colon-separated variables and after redirections (> or <)
• escapes special characters when expanding file names
• is configurable through programmable bash completion

When the first completion is requested in shell model or a shell command, bash-completion.el starts a separate bash process. Bash-completion.el then uses this process to do the actual completion and includes it into Emacs completion suggestions.

A simpler and more complete alternative to bash-completion.el is to run a bash shell in a buffer in term mode(M-x `ansi-term'). Unfortunately, many Emacs editing features are not available when running in term mode. Also, term mode is not available in shell-command prompts.

INSTALLATION

1. copy bash-completion.el into a directory that's on Emacs load-path

2. add this into your .emacs file:

    (autoload 'bash-completion-dynamic-complete 
      "bash-completion"
      "BASH completion hook")
    (add-hook 'shell-dynamic-complete-functions
      'bash-completion-dynamic-complete)
   

or simpler, but forces you to load this file at startup:

    (require 'bash-completion)
    (bash-completion-setup)

3. reload your .emacs (M-x `eval-buffer') or restart

Once this is done, use as usual to do dynamic completion from shell mode or a shell command minibuffer, such as the one started for M-x `compile'. Note that the first completion is slow, as emacs launches a new bash process.

You'll get better results if you turn on programmable bash completion. On Ubuntu, this means running:

sudo apt-get install bash-completion

and then adding this to your .bashrc:

. /etc/bash_completion

Right after enabling programmable bash completion, and whenever you make changes to you .bashrc, call `bash-completion-reset' to make sure bash completion takes your new settings into account.

Loading /etc/bash_completion often takes time, and is not necessary in shell mode, since completion is done by a separate process, not the process shell-mode process.

To turn off bash completion when running from emacs but keep it on for processes started by bash-completion.el, add this to your .bashrc:

if [[ ( -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" || "$EMACS_BASH_COMPLETE" = "t" ) &&\
     -f /etc/bash_completion ]]; then
  . /etc/bash_completion
fi

Emacs sets the environment variable INSIDE_EMACS to the processes started from it. Processes started by bash-completion.el have the environment variable EMACS_BASH_COMPLETE set to t.

CAVEATS

Using a separate process for doing the completion has several important disadvantages:

• bash completion is slower than standard emacs completion

• the first completion can take a long time, since a new bash process needs to be started and initialized

• the separate process is not aware of any changes made to bash in the current buffer. In a standard terminal, you could do:

    $ alias myalias=ls
    $ myal<TAB>
  

  and bash would propose the new alias. Bash-completion.el cannot do that, as it is not aware of anything configured in the current shell. To make bash-completion.el aware of a new alias, you need to add it to .bashrc and restart the completion process using `bash-completion-reset'.

COMPATIBILITY

bash-completion.el is known to work on Emacs 22 through 24.4 under Linux and OSX. It does not works on XEmacs.