go-libedit

Go wrapper around libedit, a replacement to GNU readline using the BSD license.

How to use:

• go build / go install
• see test/example.go for a demo.
• basic idea: call Init() once. Then call SetLeftPrompt() and GetLine() as needed. Finally call Close().

How to force using the system-wide libedit on GNU/Linux

By default, the go-libedit package uses the bundled libedit sources on GNU/Linux, so that go get works out of the box.

To force the package to use a system-wide libedit instead, edit unix/editline_unix.go as follows:

• remove the line containing #cgo linux CFLAGS
• change the line containing #cgo linux CPPFLAGS to read: #cgo linux CPPFLAGS: -I/usr/include/editline -Ishim
• change the line containing #cgo linux LDFLAGS to read: #cgo linux LDFLAGS: -ledit

macOS/OSX due to restrictions due to changes macOS Mojave

macOS Mojave is shipped with a broken/restricted libedit where the completion API is not published. Because it is not possible to automatically detect macOS versions, go-libedit will use a reduced autocompletion facility on all versions of macOS instead.

This autocompletion facility lacks the following features from libedit:

• it cannot autocomplete file and directory names.
• it does not display a list of possible completions. Only the fact that more than 1 completion is available is signalled using a terminal beep.

How to refresh the bundled libedit sources

(Only needed when upgrading the bundled libedit to a newer version.)

This procedure should be ran on a Debian/Ubuntu system.

1. ensure that /etc/apt/sources.list contains source repositories, i.e. the deb-src lines are uncommented. Run apt-get update as necessary.

2. run:

   $ sudo apt-get install libbsd libbsd-dev libncurses-dev`
   $ cd src
   $ bash refresh.sh