Shell package guidelines

Arch package guidelines

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Install

For users to change shells, the shell must appear in /etc/shells. Most shell packages have install scripts like below:

''shellname''.install

post_install() {
    grep -Fqx /bin/''shellname'' /etc/shells || echo /bin/''shellname'' >>/etc/shells
    grep -Fqx /usr/bin/''shellname'' /etc/shells || echo /usr/bin/''shellname'' >>/etc/shells
}

post_upgrade() {
    post_install
}

post_remove() {
    sed -i -r '/^(\/usr)?\/bin\/''shellname''$/d' etc/shells
}

Shell completions

Most shells provide a built in set of completions for a few common commands while also scanning at least one system directory for functions that may be supplied by other packages. The following table is a summary of where packages may place completion files and what the files should be named.

Shell	Directory	File
Bash	/usr/share/bash-completion/completions	binary_name
fish	/usr/share/fish/vendor_completions.d	binary_name.fish
Zsh

Other shells:

• Elvish provides some default completions, but does not have a system-wide directory where completions can be provided yet. For packages that generate Elvish shell completion functions, one solution would be to package them and use a function to print a tip for users to symlink it to their directory.

Tip: As a general rule, packages should have neither depends nor optdepends on shells. Just because they happen to supply completions for them does not imply a package dependency relationship any way. The exception is packages that do not supply their own completions; the completions do not exist in the default shell package, but they are provided by the supplemental collection packages bash-completion or zsh-completions. When completion files exist in these packages, add them to optdepends.