Re: How completions work, do they require fpath?

[Sebastian Gniazdowski <sgniazdowski@gmail.com>]

On 28 January 2016 at 08:11, Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
> On Jan 26,  6:18pm, Sebastian Gniazdowski wrote:
> }
> } my current understanding of the completions is that if a file-function
> } with name starting with "_", and having "#compdef ..." in first line
> } of content, is found in $fpath, then, if compinit is run, the function
> } will be autoloaded and used by _main_complete. Am I missing something
> } here?
>
> No.

One thing emerged – I was expecting that empty say "_cp" will just be
ignored, because of lack of #compdef, however it isn't – it blocks
other "_cp" files from loading.

> } Does this mean that compinit should be best run once after all needed
> } fpath updates?
>
> Ideally yes, but really #compdef is just a way to have the compdef
> function invoked automatically for some files.  If the plugin is
> already calling autoload + compdef directly, compinit isn't needed.

Interesting, have to test this

> Other than that, the shadow-autoload trick already used in zplugin
> should work for completion autoloads, although they would not get
> recorded in ~/.zcompdump (and you wouldn't want them to be, in that
> circumstance).

That worries me, I hope my shadowing doesn't interfere with completion
autoloads. That said, it seems that plugin would have to invoke
"compinit" to trigger such autoloads?

> } I wanted to have fpath "clean", and I guess I can still have it
>
> I've been a little puzzled all along about why you object to having
> entries in fpath.

I wasn't 100% sure myself if my expectations of fpath being "clean"
are reasonable. However now after implementing completion support to
Zplugin I see it was a good thing. Really, really nice thing to just
have "~/.zplugin/completions" instead of 10 entries:

https://asciinema.org/a/dmacq18klhw9rfxfffrhweh6a

> } like this: create ~/.zplugin/completions, add it to fpath, simlink
> } any plugin's "_*" files there.
>
> There's another possibility:  use zcompile.  Gather up the names of
> all the autoloadable files defined by the plugins, and then run for
> example
>
>     zcompile ZPLUGINS $all_the_paths_of_autoloadable_files
>
> This will create a (large) file ZPLUGINS.zwc containing all potential
> autoloads.  Then just add that file name (not a directory name in
> this special case) to fpath:
>
>     fpath+=($PWD/ZPLUGINS.zwc)
>
> and you're done.  Some checks that you don't clobber the file when
> a new shell starts up are advised, because zsh typically mmap's it and
> shares it.

Will think about that, currently I've implemented completion handling
via simlinks, and this gives a nice feature – I can check from which
plugin a completion comes from (as seen in the asciinema video)

Best regards,
Sebastian Gniazdowski