Bash completion for commands in Mac OS

Question

How do I get fink and macports to autocomplete program names when typing commands, as in Ubuntu's apt-get?

For example when I type

sudo port install ca

and press tab, I want the terminal to autocomplete or show me the available commands.

OS X does not even auto-complete commands after sudo!

Answer 1

A method would be to add the auto completion package using MacPorts or Homebrew. I would advise you to switch to Homebrew anyway if you're still using MacPorts. Just a personal preference though.

Install the bash-completion package

Anyway, install the bash-completion package:

sudo port install bash-completion
brew install bash-completion

This also works with Fink too, I suppose.

You should then edit your ~/.bash_profile and add the following if you used MacPorts:

if [ -f /opt/local/etc/bash_completion ]; then
 /opt/local/etc/bash_completion
fi

If you instead used Homebrew, add the following:

if [ -f `brew --prefix`/etc/bash-completion ]; then
 . `brew --prefix`/etc/bash-completion
fi

Restart the Terminal or open a new shell. Now sudo should autocomplete for you, and a couple of other things as well.

I'm afraid though that MacPorts by itself won't autocomplete, and Bash just doesn't know which packages exist. Luckily, there's remedy for that.

---

Install autocompletion for MacPorts

According to the MacPorts Wiki you can enable autocompletion for port <command>. It also completes package names. Furthermore, it should enable autocompletion for all other installed ports.

Add the following line to /opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf:

+bash_completion

Then restart the Terminal or open a new shell. Thanks to Daniel Beck and Kevin Reid for pointing those things out.

Install autocompletion for Homebrew

You can install Homebrew's own autocompletion script by executing:

ln -s "/usr/local/Library/Contributions/brew_bash_completion.sh" "/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d"

and then restarting the Terminal. Now Homebrew will autocomplete its own commands and also its packages. Problem solved.