Supporting shell completions (spec)

[aDotInTheVoid]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Ex. I'm always frustrated when autocomplete doesnt work.

Eg:

• touch TAB doesnt work
• ~/pre TAB doesnt work (should expand to ~/prefix
• ninja ins TAB completes to ninja install_manifest.txt, not ninja install
• cd rustd TAB completes to cd rustdoc/, not cd rustdoc, where I can then specify I wanted to go to rustdoc-json, (in rustc src/test dir
• man cla TAB doesn't comlete (zsh shows clang clang++ clang++-12 clang-12 classes.conf)

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to be able to deligate to the underlying shell to provide autocompletion.

[zachlloyd]

Makes sense as a request.

Our current approach is to try move this logic into Warp by building out our own completion grammar and library, with the rationale being:

1. Shell autocomplete is pretty hard to configure
2. You lose most of your completions when you go to remote boxes unless you've also configured completions on them
3. The current shell completion specs are (in our opinion) pretty hard to write new completions for

That said, we are missing a bunch of context right now from the shell which is making our completions worse than they should be. And we just have a number of bugs. I think we will see how far we can get without delegating to the shell, and add that as a fallback if we can't make it great.

Thanks for the report.

[diktomat]

Points 1 and 3 just aren't true for fish, writing new completions is pretty straightforward. And 2 is easily solved by syncing one's config, which is often already set up.

Rationale for the opposite however: Completion for programs is often shipped with the program for major shells, but probably won't catch up for a Warp until it has a laaaarge userbase.

In my book, this is exactly what #2: Keep the power, but fix the UI. means. Why reimplement or worse cut (in case of missing completions) the power here instead of relying on the shell and just fixing the UI?

Btw, is there already a way for the user to add completions to Warp?

[rocketraman]

In addition, many if not most commands in Linux come with completions out of the box. I rarely configure my own completions, and yet my experience on Linux with completions on my usual terminal and shell (Yakuake and fish) is far better than my experience with completions on Warp. This contradicts all 3 of the points made by @zachlloyd .

[DavidSouther]

I'm seeing this today with Bazel & Kubernetes, both of which use compinit in zsh.

[aDotInTheVoid]

Maybe a hybrid aproach works best, where if you know about a tool (npm, etc) you provide native support, but if not, you can delegate to the underlying shell (ninja, r2, rg etc).

Some of the more basic stuff (starting with ~ or /, completing touch) should definatly be fixed in your layer

[ToontjeM]

Shall-defined functions should also be included in the auto-completion. If i say
myfunction () { bla bla }

The myfunction should be available in auto-complete. Just like normal zsh.

[zachlloyd]

Yup, we will explore that. We actually started with an approach of delegating the shell, but it did introduce extra latency. As a fallback though it might be acceptable. Appreciate the feedback.

[simjnd]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Ex. I'm always frustrated when autocomplete doesnt work.

Eg:

• touch TAB doesnt work
• ~/pre TAB doesnt work (should expand to ~/prefix
• ninja ins TAB completes to ninja install_manifest.txt, not ninja install
• cd rustd TAB completes to cd rustdoc/, not cd rustdoc, where I can then specify I wanted to go to rustdoc-json, (in rustc src/test dir
• man cla TAB doesn't comlete (zsh shows clang clang++ clang++-12 clang-12 classes.conf)

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to be able to deligate to the underlying shell to provide autocompletion.

Completion using variables is also broken, e.g. ls $HOME/Dow expands the variable and autocompletes to ls /Users/simjnd/Downloads but it doesn't work in Warp

[jklein24]

Throwing my +1 into the mix on this that the autocomplete issues definitely hinder my ability to use Warp as a primary driver right now. I also source an open source git_completion.sh script to get autocomplete for git branches and commands, but that doesn't seem to work with warp either. Would definitely like a fallback to native autocompletion when warp has no suggestions.

[maximkrouk]

I think the lack of make autocompletion is related too.
Otherwise I may open another feature-request to support make 🙂

[davecombs]

While it's a beta (and pretty impressive so far - I find very little of what it actually does that I don't like a lot!), not having some sort of command completion at least for filenames working is really going to make things difficult to continue. Maybe my setup (bash) is interfering, but even just '. ~/.bash_al' doesn't do anything - no list of files, no default pick, nothing. I have no choice but to retype in the file name completely. Anybody reported anything in bash that might interfere with what you're building (so I could at least get the minimal file completion?)

[nesl247]

I definitely think that the shell needs to take precedence here over any autocompletion by the terminal. I have my shell configured exactly how I want it to be, with the autocomplete that I want it to have. Regardless of if I'm using Warp, iTerm2, Terminal.app, or any other terminal, I don't want to have a difference experience. The terminal should enhance the shell, not replace it.

[ned-si]

I definitely think that the shell needs to take precedence here over any autocompletion by the terminal. I have my shell configured exactly how I want it to be, with the autocomplete that I want it to have.

+1 for this!

Having default autocompletion included in the terminal is fine, but I think that users must have the ability to customize it exactly the way they want is very important.

Being able to simply use what was already made at the shell level would be best, but another acceptable possibility, imo, would be to be able to customize it with a config file for Warp.

As someone else mentioned already, this is the single thing that prevents me to daily test Warp.

[dannysteenman]

Same here! This is preventing me from switching to warp from iterm

[ToontjeM]

+1 So far I like Warp a lot, but configurable completions is a must have.

[arunkumar413]

I think a JOSN like command structure would be of great help. More info here: #585

[elviskahoro]

From @arunkumar413

Hi Team,

Most of the Linux commands don't have a common structure. Each command has its own options and flags. I recommend a JSON like structure for the commands and their options.

For example:

{
    commandName: "ls",
    options: {
      all: true,
      author: true,
      humanReadable: true,
      recursive: true
    }
  }

This JSON like structure should be parsed into the regular Linux commands and executed. We'll have a terminal feature like text editor that takes JSON input, interprets the JSON like structure into regular commands and outputs the result.

This feature would make the documentation, linting, code completion easier. Each command option would be self explanatory and easier to understand.

Note: This wont be a complete replace of the existing command line but just an addition to the existing command line which takes a JSON structure as a command.

[neelmehta247]

Had a ticket related to this discussion here: #622.

I was having issues using commands like kubectl and skaffold where the tab autocompletion would simply do nothing (presumably because there wasn't a file in my working dir with the same prefix). I think in cases where the command is unsupported, delegating to shell is a good way to go, even if it adds latency.

For kubectl for instance, the shell completion fetches suggestions from the k8s API I believe to give autocompletions that wouldn't be found on machine. I can see how this would be tricky to build a custom solution for in Warp so falling back to shell could be a good stopgap.

[elviskahoro]

From ChrisVarenChris via Discord: https://discord.com/channels/851854972600451112/852251449068486773/900932342653255700

i assume a shell's native completion system is just incompatible, so you need to write new ones for Warp? At the moment, this 100% what's stopping me from using Warp for the majority of work. A crowd sourced repository of open source completions wouldn't solve it since we have completions for internal tools that are used all the time. Though most of these completions are autogenerated from getopt-style help texts so just the ability to have custom user completions would be enough. (I believe fish shell auto-magically generates completions in a similar way)

[jesus-villalba]

It doesn't autocomplete functions defined .zshrc, e.g.
function rstoserver { rsync $1 user@server.com:$2 }.
Is there a work around?

[elviskahoro]

From blitz2145 via Discord: https://discord.com/channels/851854972600451112/906269689116770304/908912605232529418

Perhaps this one is out of scope for the warp terminal in the short term, but the UI could build on a shell that supported this theoretical completions protocol. How about something like the LSP (Language Server Protocol) but for autocompletions, perhaps cli programs themselves could be invoked to output completions for their own commands, rather than having to build stuff like fig (which is nice, but cli programs themselves should take on the responsibility for completions), etc. The Oil shell actually has a great design/architecture for how to do this, https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shellac-Protocol-Proposal

[shanness]

Going on 3 years and Nada. It's such bad form the way the dev team seem to write this off and try to convince us it's not such a problem, or that we should use workarounds.

I'm subscribed to the big pile of tickets about this, but until this is fixed, I'm outta here.

[slimani-dev]

One of the main reasons I'm still using the old terminal is the lack of autocomplete functionality in Warp. Autocomplete saves me a lot of time and helps me avoid typos, especially when working with long commands. For example, when using sudo apt install, autocomplete lets me see a list of available programs after typing the first few letters.

So, if I start typing sudo apt install py, and then press Tab, it would show me suggestions like python3, python3-dev, pylint, etc. This saves me time from typing out the entire program name and helps avoid typos. Implementing autocomplete would be a major improvement for Warp's usability and would definitely encourage me to switch over.

[ginkgomzd]

Should this be closed?
I'm a n00b to warp and I got here because completions didn't appear to be working. Today they are working, just as I expect. I'm wondering if I was confused between auto suggestions and completions. Or did a very recent update change this?

[welcoMattic]

It still doesn't work. What we have now is auto-suggestion, which is incorrect 75% of the time. It's like the 1st hours of GitHub Copilot, nonsensical most of the time and therefore counterproductive. It's been decades since terminals supported true auto-completion of tools, but Warp decides to turn a deaf ear to this crucial shortcoming.

[ginkgomzd]

I am getting contextual and appropriate completions, distinct from autosuggestions. The autosuggestions appear as dimmed text in the terminal automatically. The completions appear as a context menu after (with default keyboard shortcut). My native terminal is bash, so there could be a difference if you are using zsh?? Do check if you have the latest release.

[parametalol]

Try to find any useful suggestion (not from the command history) for systemctl.
Dimmed — come from the command history, I guess, "context" menu — just a useless confusion.

[NgxuAnGMH]

The lack of auto-completion does hinder users from migrating to warp from other shells. The completion menu and autosuggestion functions that come with warp are not perfect, and as a result, they are not enough to replace auto-completion.

I'm using zsh and then installed a bunch of plugins, as well as sourced some auto-completion scripts. It's really a pity that warp can't reuse this part of the work.

[user-cube]

We are in 2024, 3 years have passed since the start of this thread and we still don't have any news on the subject.
Is there a deadline for this feature? Are you even thinking about implementing support?
Should we all return to iterm2? I confess that lately I have been using iterm2 more and more due to the lack of support for this functionality.

[servernoj]

I got some feedback recently from the Warp team when I posted on Discord and referenced this thread. The answer was (quote):

Nothing planned for supporting shell completions at this time as we are working on other priorities (mainly Warp for Windows, improving Warp for Linux, etc.)

so it looks like we need to wait for the day when Windows users will become a little happy-er first.

As for me, I moved back to iTerm2 after using Warp for about 2 years...

[user-cube]

If it's not a priority, nothing better than returning to iTerm2.
I have developed a few tools with autocomplete but without this functionality in warp it becomes difficult to test and use them.
I hope Windows users are super happy to be the priority.
iTerm2 here we go again.

[kvenn]

Yeah I've since switched back to iTerm2. If there's one thing that I use out of my shell literally every day, it's to autocomplete commands.

I use just in all my projects and not having autocomplete for that is SO brutal. Why on earth would they go with an approach of manually adding every command one-by-one? The autocomplete is already written! Just route to it.

[mhm13dev]

+1 for the shell autocomplete

[c4shdev]

The autocomplete still lacks the vitamins needed to be fully functional. I am going back to iTerm or Wezterm as they should listen to the community rather than enforce AI. This is a request of many years.

[olinox14]

Same here, this is the only thing that prevent me from using warp...

[ivan-masich]

I was used warp during several days and I really like it, but in same time I want to use shell completions, so unfortunately I switched back to iTerm2.

[kr3cj]

For what it's worth, I'm keeping my eye on https://www.waveterm.dev/ as it is another blocked based terminal similar to Warp. Wisely, Wave does not appear to be trying to write their own shell completion so I'm interested in it. But it's still new so it's not there yet as far as other functionality goes.

[kvenn]

Oh wow this looks great! Couldn't use Warp because of the lack of completions but I really don't have any allegiance to iTerm

[sandzhaj]

For what it's worth, I'm keeping my eye on https://www.waveterm.dev/ as it is another blocked based terminal similar to Warp. Wisely, Wave does not appear to be trying to write their own shell completion so I'm interested in it. But it's still new so it's not there yet as far as other functionality goes.

Thank you very much

[polds]

Adding a frustrating data point. TaskWarrior, which I do not use, nor have installed, and Task, which I heavily use, both install as task. Warps auto complete ships with support for TaskWarrior, so as I'm trying to invoke Taskfile commands Warp gets in the way and is constantly replacing my input with TaskWarrior commands.

So for example, in the below gif, if I type task test to run my tests as soon as I hit enter, every single time, Warp accepts the recommended TaskWarrior command timesheet, so I have to cmd + z to undo the suggestion and hit enter. Every single time.

---

On top of interpreting actual shell completion, it'd be amazing if Warp were able to adopt a solution like Fig.io had and allow custom auto complete specs to be authored (https://fig.io/docs/concepts/cli-skeleton) (I'm still sad they shutdown).

[xilopaint]

Fig was bought by Amazon and is now called Amazon Q. That's what I use along with iTerm.

[polds]

True, but they disabled a lot of the features like building autocomplete specs for your own CLIs and instead went all in on their AI offerings.

[sashaaldrick]

I love Warp and was sure that it was my config that was playing up for autocomplete. +1 for autocompletions, they are sorely missed 🪦

[stivens13]

If this helps anybody, sourcing a shell the second time disables Warp's autocompletion wall and enables shell's autocompletion.

What I do 90% of the time I need completions - type fish and then shell is full-featured

[stivens13]

Kyle, the features you mentioned do seem as legit important enhancers. What this thread portrays, though, is that Warp has taken a controversial path of not providing robust and established autocomplete functionality (for 4th year now) for their own reasons. Nevertheless, such a basic functionality that already exists in regular shells as autocomplete seems to be more important to a great chunk of user base, including myself, that sacrificing Warp's features is worth it

[xilopaint]

I'd rather sacrifice Warp itself and use iTerm.

[gerhard4]

Thanks for the tip. Problems with autocomplete (unexpected behavior, no support for some tools that I use) and, after finding this discussion, the fact that this is unlikely to be fixed, are my main problem with Warp. I don't know what people do who don't have autocomplete problems -- I have them every day, and not only once. I'm still evaluating, but I may be with xilopaint and just dump it.

Like in a Python venv I type dea and see the word completed with grey ctivate, but when I hit Tab, it becomes deallocvt. No other options. Huh? If I type only de and then Tab, I get a bunch of options, but none of them is deactivate. This is basic stuff. I know that with RightArrow I get deactivate, but this Tab behavior is not helpful. I hit an oddity similar to this per hour. It seems for a normal shell use, Warp's autocompletion is just not usable.

[slimani-dev]

Why is this being ignored by the devs? It's frustrating to see this issue continuously raised without any acknowledgment or response. This particular problem has prevented me from using Warp altogether, which is disappointing because I was excited about its potential.

It’s crucial for users to feel heard, especially when issues directly impact their ability to use the software. A lack of communication on this matter leaves us in limbo, and it would be beneficial to understand if there are plans to address it. I hope to see more engagement from the team regarding this concern.

[Integralist]

Oh nice. OK yeah so zsh then pass -c <WHATEVER>+<TAB> works for me. I can then just exit out of the subshell.

It's a poor developer experience, but it'll do.

[servernoj]

Crucial for users but not for PMs :)

…

On Fri, Oct 11, 2024, 6:47 PM Mohamed ***@***.***> wrote: Why is this being ignored by the devs? It's frustrating to see this issue continuously raised without any acknowledgment or response. This particular problem has prevented me from using Warp altogether, which is disappointing because I was excited about its potential. It’s crucial for users to feel heard, especially when issues directly impact their ability to use the software. A lack of communication on this matter leaves us in limbo, and it would be beneficial to understand if there are plans to address it. I hope to see more engagement from the team regarding this concern. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#434 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKLJW26PZDOOHG7NI52RDJTZ3BWQLAVCNFSM5LRT5KV2U5DIOJSWCZC7NNSXTOSENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQ5TCMBZGIYDANBV> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>