Question to maintainers of third-party packages that install zsh completions

Question to maintainers of third-party packages that install zsh completions

[Daniel Shahaf]

Where would you expect the answer to "How does one install third-party
zsh completions in such a way that zsh will pick them up automatically?"
to be found?  I'd like to make sure the documentation has this
information where people who look for it will find it.

Cheers,

Daniel

Re: Question to maintainers of third-party packages that install zsh completions

[Stephane Chazelas]

2021-04-01 23:11:28 +0000, Daniel Shahaf:
> Where would you expect the answer to "How does one install third-party
> zsh completions in such a way that zsh will pick them up automatically?"
> to be found?  I'd like to make sure the documentation has this
> information where people who look for it will find it.
[...]

On the subject, see also
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/607809/where-should-i-install-the-zsh-completion-file-as-a-package-maintainer

-- 
Stephane

Re: Question to maintainers of third-party packages that install zsh completions

[Marlon Richert]

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On 2 Apr 2021, at 09:00, Stephane Chazelas <stephane@chazelas.org> wrote:
> 2021-04-01 23:11:28 +0000, Daniel Shahaf:
>> Where would you expect the answer to "How does one install third-party
>> zsh completions in such a way that zsh will pick them up automatically?"
>> to be found?  I'd like to make sure the documentation has this
>> information where people who look for it will find it.
> 
> On the subject, see also
> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/607809/where-should-i-install-the-zsh-completion-file-as-a-package-maintainer

See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67136714/how-to-properly-call-compinit-and-bashcompinit-in-zsh <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67136714/how-to-properly-call-compinit-and-bashcompinit-in-zsh>

…and let me know if you think I should change anything about my answer there. :)


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Re: Question to maintainers of third-party packages that install zsh completions

[Frank Terbeck]

Hi,

Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> Where would you expect the answer to "How does one install third-party
> zsh completions in such a way that zsh will pick them up automatically?"
> to be found?  I'd like to make sure the documentation has this
> information where people who look for it will find it.

Tough question to answer in full generality.  Depends on the kind of in-
stallation you're interested in, too. Debian's vendor package, for exam-
ple, has the following convention¹:

[..snip..]
Load-path for functions from other packages
-------------------------------------------

In respsonse to #620452, the  zsh-binary from Debian's zsh package star-
ted to provide two entries to $fpath (the search path for loadable func-
tions) for other packages to drop function files into:

  - /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions for functions  that add functiona-
    lity to zsh's function based completion system (compsys)

  - /usr/share/zsh/vendor-functions for all other functions

If you  maintain another Debian package  that wants to add  functions to
zsh's function load-path, please use  the those conventions when instal-
ling function files.
[..snap..]

This  was done  to keep  ‘/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions’ available
for purely  local additions to  the load-path.  Debian does not  put the
‘site-functions’ directory  into ‘/usr’ (sans /local),  because the non-
local part of ‘/usr’ is meant to be managed by Debian's package system.

Not all vendors do this, of course. But it neatly keeps package and site
local installation separate.


Still, however, the ‘site-functions’ directory is always the first entry
in the load-path list, based on all compile-time options. So, for purely
local function installation, this may be good enough:

  zsh -f -c 'print ${fpath[1]}'

Vendors may have additional requirements  when it comes to their package
system.


Regards, Frank

¹ https://salsa.debian.org/debian/zsh/-/blob/debian/debian/README.Debian