For the past couple of weeks or so, I've noticed that, often, when I press the Tab key to try and complete a command in a bash shell in a terminal, I get an error message. It says:
bash: _split_longopt: command not found
What could cause this, and how can I fix it?
Notes:
/usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion is present, and I haven't modified it myself. It has a function named _comp__split_longopt.Note: I'm using Devuan Excalibur (~= Debian Trixie without systemd).
Apparently, while the _split_longopt function is gone from /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion, there are still lots of packages which rely on its existence:
$ grep -rl "\\b_split_longopt\\b" *
completions/opensc-asn1
completions/netkey-tool
completions/pkcs15-init
completions/opensc-notify
completions/eidenv
completions/dtrust-tool
completions/goid-tool
completions/opensc-tool
completions/npa-tool
completions/iasecc-tool
completions/grub
completions/pkcs11-register
completions/dnie-tool
completions/cmake
completions/cryptoflex-tool
completions/sc-hsm-tool
completions/westcos-tool
completions/pkcs11-tool
completions/egk-tool
completions/openpgp-tool
completions/piv-tool
completions/opensc-explorer
completions/pkcs15-tool
completions/cardos-tool
completions/gids-tool
completions/pkcs15-crypt
As @steeldriver notes, this is likely due to your using a testing version of a distribution, which is undergoing possibly-breaking changes. At some point before Debian Trixie / Devuan Excalibur is released, this should get fixed.
In the mean time... you could replace the function name in all those files, like so:
sudo sed -ri s'/_split_longopt/_comp__split_longopt/' \
$(grep -rl "\\b_split_longopt\\b" /usr/share/bash-completion)
@einpoklum: Thanks for locating the root cause. As requested ..
Or more pragmatically, do what the developers should have done in the first place; Make it backwards compatible. So, just add this to your .bashrc:
_split_longopt() { _comp__split_longopt "$@"; }
/usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion- have you modified that file?