RE: bash-completion load times

[Adam Dinwoodie <Adam dot Dinwoodie at metaswitch dot com>]

Gary Johnson wrote:
> Cygwin's bash-completion package is version 1.3.  Versions 1.9 and
> later use dynamic loading of completions that is supposed to
> improve the loading times.  I think your best bet is to wait for the
> Cygwin package to be updated to the latest 2.1 version and see how
> that improves performance.  Or just download and install it from
> source yourself.

I'll give that a try when I have a chance, and report back on what difference
it makes.

> That said, I'm surprised by the variation in load times of the files
> in /etc/bash_completion.d that you observed.  Those files all start
> with a call to the have() function which should abort further
> processing of the file if the corresponding program is not
> installed.

The results I was seeing were pretty consistent.  I'd guess the difference is
due to either (a) some files being larger and thus taking significantly longer
to parse, (b) calls to have() being slow in Cygwin for some reason, or (c)
both.

It should be relatively easy to distinguish between these experimentally.
However if upgrading to a later version of bash-completion solves the problem,
I suspect it won't be worth the effort.

Adam

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