What is the purpose of CARAPACE_BRIDGES?

[michaelrommel]

Hello,

I fail to see a difference in completions whether or not I enable CARAPACE_BRIDGES. carapace --list --all definitely shows me more completers than before, after I set the environment variable to 'bash,zsh', but in practise I get exactly the same results as before. If I take base64 or dkms as examples, the list of displayed options are exactly the same regardless of the environment settings.

What should I see or experience? I am a bit stumped and suspect an error in my config.

My config for zsh is:

        export CARAPACE_BRIDGES='zsh,bash'
        zstyle ':completion:*' format $'\e[2;37m%d\e[m'
        zstyle ':completion:*:git:*' group-order 'main commands' 'alias commands' 'external commands'
        autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
        source <(carapace _carapace)
...

[michaelrommel]

with bridges:

> carapace --list --all |wc -l
    1390
> base64 -
option
--break   -b  -- wrap encoded lines at specified number of columns
--decode  -D  -- decode input from base64
--help    -h  -- display help information
--input   -i  -- specify input file
--output  -o  -- specify output file

without bridges:

> carapace --list --all |wc -l
     615
> base64 -
option
--break   -b  -- wrap encoded lines at specified number of columns
--decode  -D  -- decode input from base64
--help    -h  -- display help information
--input   -i  -- specify input file
--output  -o  -- specify output file

[rsteube]

Your ZSH has a base64 completer. Without bridges his isn't overriden by carapace as it currently does not provide one.

With bridges completions from other shells are passed through carapace.
In this specific case carapace registers the base64 completer but in the end it's the one from ZSH.
This adds a bit of overhead but is still beneficial as can embed it in sudo base64 and the like.

It's a bit more obvious in newer shells which don't have a lot completions and benefit from re-using the ones from ZSH.

[michaelrommel]

Hi, thanks for the quick response! Yes, so far I had understood it and I tried the sudo example. But typing

sudo base64 -

and pressing Tab provides no completion at all, the cursor is just stuck at the same position and not even the option message is shown. It does not matter if I sudoed immediately before and entered the password and the next invocation would not even need a password... This is on a macOS machine: zsh 5.9 (x86_64-apple-darwin22.0) The behaviour does not change even if I use a homebrew zsh: zsh 5.9 (arm-apple-darwin22.6.0)

Update: now I tried to remove any error on my side by completely eliminating my .zshrc. So now I am starting a plain zsh and the behaviour still is the same:

1. in a plain shell typing base64 - and pressing tab does not complete anything
2. after sourcing carapace pressing tab gives me completion options
3. typing sudo base64 - has the same behaviour as in 1. no completion

rommel@rosella ~ % source .path.d/80_carapace.zsh
rommel@rosella ~ % base64 -d
rommel@rosella ~ % sudo base64 -
rommel@rosella ~ % cat .path.d/80_carapace.zsh
#! /usr/bin/env zsh

RET=$(carapace --version 2>/dev/null)
if [[ "$?" -eq 0 ]]; then
        export CARAPACE_BRIDGES='zsh,bash'
        export CARAPACE_EXCLUDES='kill'
        zstyle ':completion:*' format $'\e[2;37m%d\e[m'
        zstyle ':completion:*:git:*' group-order 'main commands' 'alias commands' 'external commands'
        autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
        source <(carapace _carapace)
fi
rommel@rosella ~ %

[rsteube]

Hmmm..works for me on linux though 🤔.
Not sure if there's an issue with it on mac at the moment.

[rsteube]

I can see something in the logs (/var/folders/.../carapace.log).
Think it's related to the space in the path (Application Support), but there's more.

https://github.com/carapace-sh/carapace-bridge/pull/247/files

[michaelrommel]

If I can set it to .config/carapace that would also be preferable to me. As it would allow configs to be shared across platforms. Unfortunately I don't see a way to override UserConfigDir of Go. Some projects let me override this, e.g. neovim's harper-ls where I can set user dictionaries, that I can then sync across platforms.

[rsteube]

Seems to be someting related to the _base64 completion script. _dkms in the same folder works.
On linux this is fine but on mac it still fails - looking into it.

[rsteube]

Ok the fix with quoting the folder might do it for you. The base64 completer just doesn't work on my mac at all (so shouldn't be related to carapace).

[michaelrommel]

I'll try that as soon as it's available, unfortunately I have not yet manually installed it, I used homebrew. Need to change that.

[rsteube]

Homebrew is fine. You can try a nightly later and just remove it again after a test.

[michaelrommel]

I can confirm, with the patch manually applied to the caraspace-bridge repo, the resulting binary works. Just a little slow at startup, because I did not build the release version. Gonna try that now.