autocompletion generation doesn't work

[cprn]

Describe the bug
I noticed there's no autocompletion for protontricks in terminal, at least not on ZSH on Manjaro (I checked Bash, and it didn't work either, but I'm not sure if I did that right). I tried to generate autocompletion scripts like for any other Python project, but the resulting function initializes GUI every time I press Tab. AI claims it's because GUI initialization happens before argcomplete hooks are called in Protontricks source code.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behaviour:

1. install argcomplete:

   yay -S python-argcomplete
   

2. generate completion script:

   register-python-argcomplete -s zsh protontricks | sudo tee /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_protontricks
   

3. replace function names so they wouldn't collide with autocompletion for other Python tools:

   sudo sed -i 's/_python_/_protontricks_/g' /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_protontricks
   

4. re-generate completion cache:

   rm -f ~/.zcompdump*; compinit
   

5. open fresh terminal
6. type protontricks (with trailing space)
7. press Tab (might need to press it twice)
8. notice how it opens GUI

Expected behavior
Autocompletion with the list of appids for installed games, certainly not spawning windows.

System (please complete the following information):

• Distro: Manjaro 25.1.0
• Protontricks installation method: yay -S protontricks
• Protontricks version: 1.13.1
• Steam version: 1766451605 (Stable Client)

Additional context
It'd be nice to get autocompletion from argcomplete, because it would always reflect what's in the code. If you aren't interested in fixing it, though, I wrote a completion script for ZSH (it's not great, but it works) that you can straight up add to this project. If you tell me how you want to deal with Makefile and different shells, I can send a PR. Don't know how completions work in Bash, Fish, or others, so that part would have to be handled by someone else.

[Matoking]

I made a quick initial implementation in the arg_autocomplete branch. It has two main issues that I'd like to resolve, though:

• If supported by the shell, app ID arguments should be sorted by app name (i.e. help text), not the actual argument. This can be hacked around with custom arguments in the argcomplete registration command, but that's not very clean.
• Winetricks command should use underlying already installed auto-completion. This might not be achievable with argcomplete library.

The autocompletion script provided in Fish shell (thanks @luluco250!) here resolves both and is robust overall. The main issue it has is that it uses protontricks -l to retrieve list of all apps, but it won't retrieve all if there are multiple Steam installations, and it will cause a graphical prompt to pop up if multiple installations exist; that Protontricks command wasn't really created with autocompletion in mind.

So, not entirely sure how to best solve this. Ship rudimentary but broadly supported autocompletion using argcomplete? Add bespoke scripts for each shell despite the additional maintenance overhead? Add a semi-hidden command to retrieve all Steam apps for all Steam installations that external autocompletion scripts can hook into?

[cprn]

Thank you for looking into it at all. 👍 To be fully honest, IDK who should be responsible for providing autocompletion scripts per se, I just knew that argcomplete is a standard way of generating them for Python. Everyone understands (I think) Protontricks being a wrapper has it harder than pure Python projects, though, and those decisions should be solely yours, as you're the one who'll end up maintaining it. 🤷

TBH, my issue is mostly solved with the script I wrote, and if I ever move to Fish (which is surprisingly likely), it's mostly solved there too, so whatever you choose to do is fine with me. But the way I think it's normally solved nowadays, is CLI app providing some kind of complete command (argcomplete being a popular implementation) that generates those scripts, and package maintainers call it during package installation to put the scripts in all the right places. That command absolutely can, however, just present a ready-made script that sits in the project, and I personally never mind a word “experimental” next to such features, fully aware it might not work… What I'd do, being a lazy-ass mofo, is exactly that (least effort), and I wouldn't worry about multiple Steam instances at all.

Also, I'll look for a similar repo for ZSH (as the one you linked for Fish) that holds completions for popular CLI tools, and submit my script there (although, despite being a big time ZSH user, I have no idea if such thing even exists; outside OhMyZSH, which has kinda bad rap for being this heavy unnecessary bloat, so IDK if it's a good place for it – we will see). This way it'd be solved externally, or maybe even someone from the outside, who knows about those things, could send a patch.

[luluco250]

The main issue it has is that it uses protontricks -l to retrieve list of all apps, but it won't retrieve all if there are multiple Steam installations, and it will cause a graphical prompt to pop up if multiple installations exist; that Protontricks command wasn't really created with autocompletion in mind.

Ouch, didn't know about that when I implemented the completion script, it was mostly for myself so I didn't think of edge cases like this. I mostly copied the existing winetricks completions for Fish.

Is there a better way to handle this? Any flag that could stop protontricks from opening a GUI in case protontricks -l would be about to open one? In this case it'd be saner to just give up completing (or have some way to just cobble all installed game IDs maybe). I'm not even sure what protontricks with multiple Steam installations looks like but I suppose you have to select the desired install in that GUI, right?

[Matoking]

The main issue it has is that it uses protontricks -l to retrieve list of all apps, but it won't retrieve all if there are multiple Steam installations, and it will cause a graphical prompt to pop up if multiple installations exist; that Protontricks command wasn't really created with autocompletion in mind.

Ouch, didn't know about that when I implemented the completion script, it was mostly for myself so I didn't think of edge cases like this. I mostly copied the existing winetricks completions for Fish.

Is there a better way to handle this? Any flag that could stop protontricks from opening a GUI in case protontricks -l would be about to open one? In this case it'd be saner to just give up completing (or have some way to just cobble all installed game IDs maybe). I'm not even sure what protontricks with multiple Steam installations looks like but I suppose you have to select the desired install in that GUI, right?

Thanks for writing the Fish autocompletion script! The hiccup with --list aside it works great.

If multiple Steam installations are found, Protontricks will bring up a graphical "Select Steam installation" prompt, similar to the "Select Steam app" prompt.

I'm leaning towards adding a flag to enable --list and --search commands to operate on all Steam installations at the same time without making the user choose one. Maybe it could also be enabled automatically if an environment variable is set which would allow backwards-compatibility to be maintained for older Protontricks releases?