ros2 argument completion

[tomdeblauwe]

Hello,
In my build, the argument completion for ros2 does not work. I have bash completion for all kinds of other services like nmcli or journalctl so the mechanism should work. I install "bash-completion bash-completion-extra" and also added "bash-completion-pkgs" to the features. I am using the jazzy scarthgap layer.
Should it work or how can I test it?

[robwoolley]

It looks like the bash completion comes from https://github.com/colcon/colcon-argcomplete . However that isn't part of the ROS Index (https://index.ros.org/?pkgs=argcomplete&search_packages=true) and we don't have it as a recipe in OpenEmbedded (https://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/branch/master/recipes/?q=argcomplete)

I would gladly accept a recipe for colcon-argcomplete in meta-ros-common. ros2cli does exist in both ROS Index and has a recipe in each ROS distro layer (eg. meta-ros-jazzy). However, I suspect that it is not being sourced automatically. I see signs that folks need to add this to their .bashrc or .zshrc:

argcomplete for ros2 & colcon

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete ros2)"
eval "$(register-python-argcomplete colcon)"

However, I suspect that it should be sufficient to just have ros2cli installed. If it is installed and doesn't work, I wonder if it is neglecting to install the argcomplete file.

[tomdeblauwe]

I am looking only to have argcomplete for ros2 because I crosscompile, so i have no need for colcon itself on my device.

I already tried the first eval suggestion but that did not help. Also, it seems there was an issue with argcomplete 3.3 and monkeypatching or something(according to copilot), so I tried python3-argcomplete_3.5.0 but that did not help either.

Or are you saying that colcon-argcomplete is always required, even for ros2 completions?

[robwoolley]

I don't think colcon-argcomplete is required. I just misunderstood your request as looking for argument completion for ROS 2, instead of ros2cli (ie "ros2").

What output do you see when you run the command with the "eval": (eg. register-python-argcomplete ros2)

[tomdeblauwe]

The issue seems to be that in argcomplete package, there is a function that should take 3 arguments, but takes 2 by default. copilot suggested this fix, which I tested on a live system and it seems to do the trick. Don't know if it's actually a good fix?

---
 argcomplete/packages/_argparse.py | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/argcomplete/packages/_argparse.py b/argcomplete/packages/_argparse.py
index 1111111..2222222 100644
--- a/argcomplete/packages/_argparse.py
+++ b/argcomplete/packages/_argparse.py
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ class IntrospectiveArgumentParser(ArgumentParser):
     except for the lines that contain the string "Added by argcomplete".
     '''
 
-    def _parse_known_args(self, arg_strings, namespace):
+    def _parse_known_args(self, arg_strings, namespace, intermixed=False):
         _num_consumed_args.clear()  # Added by argcomplete
         self._argcomplete_namespace = namespace
         self.active_actions: List[Action] = []  # Added by argcomplete