Re: characters not added in _rsync completion

[Wayne Davison <wayned@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 11:41:52PM -0700, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> I'm puzzled why the version of rsync itself makes any difference,
> because _rsync specifies everything explicitly, so unless you've
> edited _rsync it won't ever complete those options.

This is not how it works on my system.  The _rsync script appears to be
querying rsync to ask it what options it supports, and combining that
list with the list in _rsync.  So, if, for instance, you've installed
the rsync 2.6.3 package from debian unstable, the new options from all
the 2.6.x versions get listed, just without descriptions.

> Similarly, I have only --links and nothing else that matches --link.

Earlier rsyncs (prior to 2.6.0) didn't list --link-dest in their help
text, even when the option was supported (and our _rsync script was
missing this option as well -- I've fixed that in the latest CVS
version).

> Yet this one works for me:
> > rsync --no<TAB>    # should add "-"

If I change rsync to 2.5.7 on my system, that one also begins to work.
However, with either a newer rsync (which lists --no-relative and
--no-implied-dirs in the help output) or if you edit the --no-relative
option into the _rsync script, it begins to fail.

> Without plunging into the why of it, a cursory inspection seems to 
> indicate that when an option has an argument (e.g., --compa completes to 
> --compare-dest= with the trailing equal sign) then zsh fails to find the 
> longest common prefix among that option and any other options that do NOT 
> have arguments (as --compress does not).  All the cases that fail appear 
> to have at least one option with, and at least one without, an argument.

It's strange that the --no<TAB> case doesn't match this idea.

..wayne..