Today I uploaded bash-completion 1:1.3-2 to the experimental branch of Debian.

This package uses dpkg triggers to achieve an overdue goal: speedup shell loading by not even looking into completions for unavailable commands.

The mechanism is simple: a trigger is activated when a package installs something in one of the usual $PATH directories, and it creates symlinks for the appropriate completions.

This upload also features a change in the layout: completions were moved out of /etc/, so you won't be annoyed anymore during upgrades (and, let's say it, they shouldn't have been there since the beginning). However /etc/bash_completion.d/ is still around for compatibility reasons. If you want to enable a completion, just symlink it there from /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/. If there are enough requests, I might do a simple compenable/compdisable script to create them.

I'd appreciate if adventurous people could test it, and report bugs (if any, hopefully). And don't be scared by the tons of messages about removed conffiles

Please beware that the "detection mechanism" of appropriate completions is not entirely foolproof: it might need some hacking upstream (adding meta-headers to completion files?), so I'll try to improve it in future.