Re: completion tricks

[Adam Spiers <adam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Matt Armstrong (matt.armstrong@xxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> I was using the new completion stuff for a while, but I switched back
> for two reasons:
> 
>  - The learning curve to actually do stuff with the new completion
>    stuff was above my personal threshold.
> 
>  - My shells started up many times slower with it in place.

This is a shame, but I can totally sympathise with your viewpoint.  I
would love to hear some tips from any zsh-workers as to how zsh can be
optimised with respect to startup time.  (Optimisation w.r.t. memory
usage is another topic I would like to hear people's thoughts on, but
it's off-topic here.)  Personally I tried messing with zcompile and
zrecompile once or twice to address this but ran out of time before I
got it working, and anyway, Peter's guide suggests that on most
computers these days it might not help much.  [Note to workers: would
it be worth having `make install' automatically zcompile the
completion system?]

As for the learning curve for the new completion system, this is a
known issue, but have you tried the `compinstall' command recently?
It goes a remarkably long way towards solving the problem.  If there's
something else which compinstall didn't help you with, if you could
find the time to describe more precisely what it was that you wanted
to do, we'll do our best to help you and/or improve the existing
documentation.

> compctl is cryptic but pretty simple.  I hope it stays around.

I don't think there are any plans to get rid of it.