exec bash -l to Load ~/.bashrc ChangesTLDR: Use exec bash -l to reload ~/.bashrc and #!/usr/bin/bash -i when you want to use complete -p <some> in a script.
I’ve been forgetting something painfully obvious all these years and finally been bitten in the ass for it. Don’t forget the -l when using exec bash -l. It turns out that this was really making all my completion scripts unhappy because the complete builtin clearly behaves radically differently when called from anything but a login shell, as in, it does set any of the completion rules at all. This was triggering the errors in all the completion scripts I’ve been sourcing in my ~/.bashrc.
If you want to see this run complete -p kubectl or something from the command line.
$ complete -p kubectl
complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k
Then put it in a script and try to capture it’s output. You won’t get what you think.
#!/usr/bin/bash
complete -p kubectl
Which produces:
$ /tmp/foo
/tmp/foo: line 2: complete: kubectl: no completion specification
In other words, you cannot call complete from a regular bash script. I tried to hack to make it work by adding -l to your shebang line. But that also fails.
/tmp/foo: line 2: complete: kubectl: no completion specification
However, adding -i for interactive shell does work:
#!/usr/bin/bash -i
complete -p kubectl
And outputs what you would expect:
$ /tmp/foo
complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k
complete -o default -F __start_kubectl kubectl