ros2 / ros2/ros2cli

Tab completion on Windows

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enhancement
Dominant language
Python
Stars
262
Forks
228
Avg merge
23h 15m
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Description

Description

Tab completion is handy. Works in many ways and is a way to get the structure for many CLI commands prefilled for sending action, sending velocity and others. Windows native users are robbed of this feature due to whatever reason. And I'd love to see some love towards that

Motivation

I was working on the Lyrical Luth Tutorial Testing Party Issue ros2/lyrical_tutorial_party#2078 when I came across this statement on the docs which isn't true for Windows native users

All the options will be autocompleted by pressing the tab key after the entering the first few characters of the option. However, the topic message prototype will only be autocompleted after \'<TAB> is entered.

Design / Implementation Considerations

Pixi documents autocompletion, but it works only for PowerShell and for ROS2 we use Command Prompt. Honestly, I couldn't get it working on PowerShell either.

Additional Information

If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would get started.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked ROS 2 topics documentation and compare its tab-completion claim with the pixi autocompletion guidance. Investigate the ros2 CLI entry points for Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell, then verify that the documented completion behavior works for native Windows users and update the documentation if needed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
powershell, python
Domain
cli, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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