autocomplete for pacman

jae1227 · 2007-02-22 04:52:30

Ok I have been using Ubuntu for about 9 months. I really liked it but the speed began to become a problem and I wanted to learn more about linux. So I have been trying many distos in VMs and had little luck. Gentoo loaded up but got issues. So I found Arch linuxand I love it. It is so easy to install and feels alot like a server install of Ubuntu but more like Debian. One this is giving me issues. In ubuntu I could just type :

sudo apt-get install nvi<tab>dia-glx

I am using <tab> to mean hit the tab button

What I am saying is that in apt-get there was an auto complete. In this case I new I wanted nvidia driver but did not know all of the package name. So how can I do this in pacman. It is probably really easy to fix. I had the same issue before with yum , no auto complete.

hacosta · 2007-02-22 04:59:18

check the bash-completion package, i think it has a file that does this

ezzetabi · 2007-02-22 07:06:39

or simply use ``pacman -Ss nvi''

jae1227 · 2007-02-22 22:05:29

so there is no way to just use the tab button to auto complete?

lucke · 2007-02-22 22:29:42

As said, bash-completion package provides that for bash. There's also zsh-completion package in AUR which provides the same for zsh.

Last edited by lucke (2007-02-22 22:30:24)

phrakture · 2007-02-23 03:34:13

jae1227 wrote:

so there is no way to just use the tab button to auto complete?

That is what was suggested. bash doesn't just *know* how to autocomplete everything. It needs help. This is what the bash_completion package does. It helps bash by telling it how to complete things when you press tab.

jae1227 · 2007-02-23 03:55:54

ok thanks for the help with bash-completion. It works great but only when in the terminal. If I use a terminal emulator like gnome-terminal is does not work. So I have to Ctrl + Alt + F1 to be able to use the auto complete. I just don't know why it does not work in gnome-terminal. I have not tried KDE terminal yet but I doubt it will work either. So far I love the speed of Arch. I came from Ubuntu and I am still trying to get minor things to work like how they did in ubuntu. But overall Arch is awesome!

jae1227 · 2007-02-23 04:11:10

sorry for writing again so soon but I just figured out how to use community repo. It is just like apt-get in that you use uncomment something. So I did that and typed:

pacman -S nautilus-open-terminal

and it installed the only problem is that if I hit tab after "nautilus-" is only showed 4 options and none of them was the open-terminal package. I think I just need to tell it to somehow include community repo in the auto complete.

Snowman · 2007-02-23 04:46:51

Did you updated your pacman db:
# pacman -Sy

phrakture · 2007-02-23 04:59:16

The reason bash completion doesn't work all the time is that it is ONLY included if you run bash as a login shell. Different terminals need different configurations to set the shell as a login shell. You'll have to check with the docs for the terminal you are using.

Alternatively, you can manually source /etc/bash_completion in your ~/.bashrc, but that's not really the "proper" fix.

jae1227 · 2007-02-23 05:28:12

Snowman wrote:

Did you updated your pacman db:
# pacman -Sy

yeah and it still did not change the auto complete. Still only auto-completing packages from current and not community.

thepizzaking · 2007-02-23 06:09:26

I also had this problem and just fixed it by removing the hash in front of the [community] line in my pacman.conf file. For some reason I still had that line commented out even though I had the repository enabled.

jae1227 · 2007-02-24 23:30:02

ok I guess alot of people don't need auto-complete. So I am wondering how everyone know what packages are avaliable and what they want. An wexample is today when I wanted oponoffice. I typed

pacman -S openoffice

but it said so such package available. Now with auto complete I found out that I should have typed :

pacman -S openoffice-base

without auto complete I would have not know that. I guess you can search on the internet each time for a package. I am used to auto complete and just wondering what people use to know what package they want.

Snowman · 2007-02-25 00:01:03

You can search with pacman:
pacman -Ss openoffice

jae1227 · 2007-02-25 02:03:57

So searching is how everyone does it in Arch Linux?

Dusty · 2007-02-25 02:52:18

They use pacman -Ss to search, or they use the web interfaces on archlinux.org and aur.archlinux.org. There's also several hundred scripts out there to make searching better for various reasons, faster, coloured output, regular expressions, etc. A forum search will provide links to most of them.

Dusty

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-02-25 04:00:49

Dusty wrote:

They use pacman -Ss to search, or they use the web interfaces on archlinux.org and aur.archlinux.org. There's also several hundred scripts out there to make searching better for various reasons, faster, coloured output, regular expressions, etc. A forum search will provide links to most of them.
Dusty

Although these scripts are available, autocompletion is a feature, which makes it a lot easier to install exactly the program you need. Nevertheless, pacman -Ss is also a very good tool and I would not like to miss it. First I was also used to use Debian-style autocompletion, but it did not take me too long to adapt to the Arch way, which I also very much appreciate. Are tools like aptitude search $packagename tools equivalent to pacman -Ss? I do not seem to remember it correctly.

phrakture · 2007-02-25 22:08:05

chaosgeisterchen wrote:

Are tools like aptitude search $packagename tools equivalent to pacman -Ss? I do not seem to remember it correctly.

We'd probably be able to answer that better if you explained what that command did.

test1000 · 2007-02-25 22:30:14

when did you forget to google? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptitude_(program)

phrakture · 2007-02-26 07:56:30

You miss my point. I don't actually _care_ about what aptitude does, compared to pacman. It is just far easier to answer a question when it is of the form "why doesn't X do Y?" as opposed to "why doesn't X do the same thing that Y does?"

Kern · 2007-02-26 11:42:26

OP:

In this case I new I wanted nvidia driver but did not know all of the package name. So how can I do this in pacman.

autocomplete depends on you knowing the first part of the name. Altho Arch doesnt use autocomplete, afaik, it can be more versatile by giving it a little help. so its really a 2 stage process if you're not knowing the exact package name. pacman also searches the description, you can search even if you cant remember _any_ of the package name.
(with full acknowledgement to the previous repliers)

i need a video driver: pacman -Ss driver : oh man too many ...
<snip results>

i think my driver package has the word nvidia in it (but i cant remember the full name) this is the usual first step:
pacman -Ss nvidia
<snip results>
this look like quite a few and its awkward to read ... what if i only need see the package names?

pacman -Ss nvidia |grep -F /
<snip results>
OK im a control freak/lets be pedantic, this still shows the nforce things, im sure it begins with nvidia i dont need the rest,
pacman -Ss nvidia |grep -F /nvid or pacman -Ss ^nvidia or pacman -Ss ^nvidia |grep -F /

etc blah blah
altho this may look a little over the top with nvidia as an example it shows the inbuilt versatility that pacman offers when you're really stuck on what package You need. play around, have fun :)

hth
Kern

Last edited by Kern (2007-02-26 11:44:07)

hugopicado · 2009-02-10 09:18:56

Hi.

It should be considered that sometimes autocomplete is useful.
It is possible to get autocomplete working on gnome terminal.

You just install the bash-completion package:

pacman -S bash-completion

and then you should enable it in your ~/.bashrc configuration file by adding
the following:

if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

After restarting the terminal you might have this working.

Regards,
Hugo.

Last edited by hugopicado (2009-02-10 11:32:03)

jordz · 2009-02-11 11:15:40

Or

ln -s ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile
source /etc/profile

/etc/profile sources ~/.bashrc

Last edited by jordz (2009-02-11 11:16:42)

alirezaimi · 2017-09-28 14:01:48

hugopicado wrote:

Hi.
It should be considered that sometimes autocomplete is useful.
It is possible to get autocomplete working on gnome terminal.
You just install the bash-completion package:
pacman -S bash-completion
and then you should enable it in your ~/.bashrc configuration file by adding
the following:
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi
After restarting the terminal you might have this working.
Regards,
Hugo.

Work for me , thanks.

V1del · 2017-09-28 14:04:10

Please refrain from necrobumping a 10 year old thread with the equivalent of a "me too" post, further infractions might lead to a ban, this information is also readily available in the wiki.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … bumping.22

Closing.

Last edited by V1del (2017-09-28 14:06:25)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-02-22 04:52:30

autocomplete for pacman

#2 2007-02-22 04:59:18

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#3 2007-02-22 07:06:39

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#4 2007-02-22 22:05:29

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#5 2007-02-22 22:29:42

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#6 2007-02-23 03:34:13

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#7 2007-02-23 03:55:54

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#8 2007-02-23 04:11:10

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#9 2007-02-23 04:46:51

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#10 2007-02-23 04:59:16

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#11 2007-02-23 05:28:12

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#12 2007-02-23 06:09:26

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#13 2007-02-24 23:30:02

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#14 2007-02-25 00:01:03

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#15 2007-02-25 02:03:57

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#16 2007-02-25 02:52:18

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#17 2007-02-25 04:00:49

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#18 2007-02-25 22:08:05

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#19 2007-02-25 22:30:14

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#20 2007-02-26 07:56:30

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#21 2007-02-26 11:42:26

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#22 2009-02-10 09:18:56

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#23 2009-02-11 11:15:40

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#24 2017-09-28 14:01:48

Re: autocomplete for pacman

#25 2017-09-28 14:04:10

Re: autocomplete for pacman

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