Including Bash autocompletion with setuptools

Question

I've got a couple packages in PyPI, and I'd like to include autocompletion features with both of them. How would you check that Bash autocompletion should be installed at all (check for /etc/bash_completion, maybe?), and how would you install it with setup.py (preferably using setuptools)?

Answer 1

If you're going to require OS-level packages (i.e. bash-completion), then you should distribute your library as an OS-level package. That is, in .deb, .rpm, etc. Some tips here:

• Debian New Maintainer's Guide
• Fedora Packaging Guidelines

As part of the package generation, you can call your setuptools script to install the Python code. To ensure bash-completion is installed, you can specify it is a required package.