Bug 811285

Summary: Tab Completion Slower in Fedora than Ubuntu using CLI Package Manager
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Matt Reid <mreid>
Component: yumAssignee: Fedora Packaging Toolset Team <packaging-team>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: ffesti, james.antill, maxamillion, pmatilai, sheltren, tim.lauridsen, ville.skytta, zpavlas
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: 919852 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2013-02-13 20:50:16 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Flags
A little test script to show the concept none

Description Matt Reid 2012-04-10 15:52:38 UTC 
Description of problem:
Not sure why this is the case, but coming from Ubuntu I've always felt that the tab completion while using yum was slower than what I was used to with apt-get in Ubuntu. I just installed two fresh vms of F16 and 11.10 and compared auto-completing similar commands and it is the case that Fedora is slower. 

In Ubuntu getting a list of packages happens immediately (as I press tab a second time), while in Fedora there's hesitation, sometimes to the point that I feel compelled to double tap again, in case it missed my command.

Not sure if this is a bash-completion thing or a difference between yum and apt, but I figured I'd note it in a BZ, as I wish it was more responsive in Fedora.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Fedora - bash-completion-1.3-6.fc16.noarch
Ubuntu - bash-completion-1:1.3-1ubuntu6

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In Ubuntu vm, type sudo apt-get install libre (tap tab twice), see "Display all 246 possibilities? (y or n)"
2. In Fedora vm, type yum install libre (tap tab twice), see "Display all 128 possibilities? (y or n)"
  
Actual results:
Ubuntu figures out what's available and gives feedback faster than Fedora

Expected results:
That Fedora tab completion is as fast as Ubuntu

Additional info:
This is noticeable on misses as well, Fedora has to think for a bit to determine that you're trying to tab complete something that doesn't exist, and you lose the ability to interact with the terminal until it finishes, whereas it doesn't seem like Ubuntu has that extra processing time and if it fails, you can alter your string immediately after the attempt, instead of waiting for a second or two. For the purposes of this comparison, I typed in random characters, but I do run into this once in awhile in Fedora.

Slight completion hesitation is noticeable in smaller cases as well, when it just needs to complete the package you're typing and not try to show you hundreds of packages as in my examples above.

Happy to provide any additional info, if more detail is helpful. Again, not sure where the difference lies, maybe its the data that bash-completion is fed, and not bash-completion itself.
Comment 1 Ville Skyttä 2012-04-11 14:27:24 UTC 
It's not about bash-completion, it's about yum vs apt-get.

To get a rough picture of it, check out "yum -C list available" vs the corresponding apt-get (or is it apt-cache? don't remember offhand) command.
Comment 2 Tim Lauridsen 2012-04-13 08:01:36 UTC 
@Matt:
comparing bash-completion speed with another distro don't make much sense.
But I agree that the bash completion with yum install foo<tab><tab> is very slow
and could be optimized.

@Ville:

If you use a helper python script, you would be able to speed it up

Check how I do it in yumex where I have realtime package lookup when you type

https://github.com/timlau/yumex/blob/master/src/yumexbackend/yum_server.py#L1046

parsing the output from "yum -C list available" will be slow because of the number of packages in Fedora and you have to list all packages every time and filter them.

if you let yum do the searching using returnPackages(patterns=['foo*']) it will speed up thing a lot and you can use YumBase.rpmdb.returnPackages on remove commands and YumBase.pkgsack.returnPackages on install/update commands.
Comment 3 Tim Lauridsen 2012-04-13 09:09:21 UTC 
Created attachment 577275 [details]
A little test script to show the concept
Comment 4 Ville Skyttä 2012-04-13 14:09:12 UTC 
We're already using a dedicated script for that, see /usr/share/yum-cli/completion-helper.py - "yum -C list available" was just an easily accessible example and I mentioned "rough picture" with it...
Comment 5 Fedora Admin XMLRPC Client 2012-04-27 15:27:52 UTC 
This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning to the new owner of this component.
Comment 6 Fedora End Of Life 2013-01-16 16:48:44 UTC 
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Comment 7 Fedora End Of Life 2013-02-13 20:50:20 UTC 
Fedora 16 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-02-12. Fedora 16 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
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