"""allow bash-completion for argparse with argcomplete if installed needs argcomplete>=0.5.6 for python 3.2/3.3 (older versions fail to find the magic string, so _ARGCOMPLETE env. var is never set, and this does not need special code. argcomplete does not support python 2.5 (although the changes for that are minor). Function try_argcomplete(parser) should be called directly before the call to ArgumentParser.parse_args(). The filescompleter is what you normally would use on the positional arguments specification, in order to get "dirname/" after "dirn" instead of the default "dirname ": optparser.add_argument(Config._file_or_dir, nargs='*' ).completer=filescompleter Other, application specific, completers should go in the file doing the add_argument calls as they need to be specified as .completer attributes as well. (If argcomplete is not installed, the function the attribute points to will not be used). SPEEDUP ======= The generic argcomplete script for bash-completion (/etc/bash_completion.d/python-argcomplete.sh ) uses a python program to determine startup script generated by pip. You can speed up completion somewhat by changing this script to include # PYTHON_ARGCOMPLETE_OK so the the python-argcomplete-check-easy-install-script does not need to be called to find the entry point of the code and see if that is marked with PYTHON_ARGCOMPLETE_OK INSTALL/DEBUGGING ================= To include this support in another application that has setup.py generated scripts: - add the line: # PYTHON_ARGCOMPLETE_OK near the top of the main python entry point - include in the file calling parse_args(): from _argcomplete import try_argcomplete, filescompleter , call try_argcomplete just before parse_args(), and optionally add filescompleter to the positional arguments' add_argument() If things do not work right away: - switch on argcomplete debugging with (also helpful when doing custom completers): export _ARC_DEBUG=1 - run: python-argcomplete-check-easy-install-script $(which appname) echo $? will echo 0 if the magic line has been found, 1 if not - sometimes it helps to find early on errors using: _ARGCOMPLETE=1 _ARC_DEBUG=1 appname which should throw a KeyError: 'COMPLINE' (which is properly set by the global argcomplete script). """ from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function import sys import os from glob import glob class FastFilesCompleter: 'Fast file completer class' def __init__(self, directories=True): self.directories = directories def __call__(self, prefix, **kwargs): """only called on non option completions""" if os.path.sep in prefix[1:]: prefix_dir = len(os.path.dirname(prefix) + os.path.sep) else: prefix_dir = 0 completion = [] globbed = [] if '*' not in prefix and '?' not in prefix: if prefix[-1] == os.path.sep: # we are on unix, otherwise no bash globbed.extend(glob(prefix + '.*')) prefix += '*' globbed.extend(glob(prefix)) for x in sorted(globbed): if os.path.isdir(x): x += '/' # append stripping the prefix (like bash, not like compgen) completion.append(x[prefix_dir:]) return completion if os.environ.get('_ARGCOMPLETE'): try: import argcomplete.completers except ImportError: sys.exit(-1) filescompleter = FastFilesCompleter() def try_argcomplete(parser): argcomplete.autocomplete(parser) else: def try_argcomplete(parser): pass filescompleter = None