Bash completion for user without access to /etc

Question

I'm using a Chromebook (with a developer mode enabled), and as someone of you may know, there is no write access to the system directories (including /etc/).

I'd like to enable the bash-completion option for the local user without adding any files to /etc, while I have an write access to /home and /use/local directories only.

How can I enable bash-completion in this case?

Thank you.

PS. ChromeOS is Gentoo-based, this information might be useful for someone.

Is "bash completion" the same thing as tab completion in this usage? — Wildcard, Apr 03 '16 at 05:47

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 03 '16 at 15:54

4

bash-completion is enabled by sourcing a shell script—it sits at /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion on my Debian box, for example—but you can put it wherever. It looks in its own directory for the completions to load.

Completions used to go in /etc/bash_completion.d, but that's now a backwards compatibility directory and can be changed by setting $BASH_COMPLETION_COMPAT_DIR before sourcing the script.

You should be able to grab it from its home on Github and install it to /usr/local or $HOME.

edited Apr 03 '16 at 15:54

Faheem Mitha

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answered Apr 03 '16 at 05:59

derobert

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You might want to have a look at [~/.bash_completion.d/](https://serverfault.com/a/831184) and this [addendum](https://serverfault.com/a/915618) – Gen.Stack Dec 08 '18 at 20:00

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 03 '16 at 05:12

-1

As far as I can tell, bash completion has been disabled in ChromeOS and there is no way to enable it.

See Chromium Bug Report

answered Apr 03 '16 at 05:12

Thomas Ramage

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It's deliberately excluded from the build, but that doesn't mean that users can't install it by themselves. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Apr 03 '16 at 20:47

Bash completion for user without access to /etc

2 Answers2