[pmg-devel] [PATCH pmg-api 3/4] partially fix #2077: pmgsh: remove dependency on Term::ReadLine

[Stoiko Ivanov]

Thanks for tackling this!

applied the patch for pve-common and played around a bit with pmgsh - and
yes - I did miss the completion (not the history though.. and am not sure
if I overlooked some other readline feature that would be lost)

but this reminded me of pvesh and that we dropped interactive mode at some
point (around PVE 5.2) there:
https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-manager.git;a=commitdiff;h=cfc6a662938b90069e6c70b8112021a4554bad27
and the rationale of using bash for completion (still) sounds sensible.

did not look closer at what pmgsh is still missing from pvesh (the latter
saw quite a bit more changes in the past years) - but currently this seems
to be a good alternative.
(I'm not sure if I'll get to checking this in the upcoming 1-2 weeks, but
could try if you are busy elsewhere and noone else steps up)

FWIW - tried registering an acme account (patch 1/4) - also worked fine.



On Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:19:43 +0200
Fiona Ebner <f.ebner at proxmox.com> wrote:

> Signed-off-by: Fiona Ebner <f.ebner at proxmox.com>
> ---
> 
> Since this removes quite a few features, it is rather bad and it's
> most likely not worth it, just to remove the dependency.
> 
>  src/bin/pmgsh | 35 ++---------------------------------
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/src/bin/pmgsh b/src/bin/pmgsh
> index 9ef39a1..b85353d 100755
> --- a/src/bin/pmgsh
> +++ b/src/bin/pmgsh
> @@ -2,7 +2,6 @@
>  
>  use strict;
>  use warnings;
> -use Term::ReadLine;
>  use File::Basename;
>  use Getopt::Long;
>  use HTTP::Status qw(:constants :is status_message);
> @@ -12,6 +11,7 @@ use PVE::JSONSchema;
>  use PVE::SafeSyslog;
>  use PVE::INotify;
>  use PVE::CLIHandler;
> +use PVE::PTY;
>  
>  use PMG::RESTEnvironment;
>  
> @@ -82,9 +82,6 @@ initlog($ENV{PVE_LOG_ID} || 'pmgsh');
>  
>  print "entering PMG shell - type 'help' for help\n";
>  
> -my $term = new Term::ReadLine('pmgsh');
> -my $attribs = $term->Attribs;
> -
>  sub complete_path {
>      my ($text) = @_;
>  
> @@ -130,28 +127,6 @@ sub complete_path {
>      return ($lcd, @res);
>  }
>  
> -# just to avoid an endless loop (called by attempted_completion_function)
> -$attribs->{completion_entry_function} = sub {
> -    my ($text, $state) = @_;
> -    return undef;
> -};
> -
> -$attribs->{attempted_completion_function} = sub {
> -    my ($text, $line, $start) = @_;
> -
> -    my $prefix = substr($line, 0, $start);
> -    if ($prefix =~ /^\s*$/) { # first word (command completion)
> -        $attribs->{completion_word} = [qw(help ls cd get set create delete quit)];
> -        return $term->completion_matches($text, $attribs->{list_completion_function});
> -    }
> -
> -    if ($prefix =~ /^\s*\S+\s+$/) { # second word (path completion)
> -        return complete_path($text);
> -    }
> -
> -    return ();
> -};
> -
>  sub abs_path {
>      my ($current, $path) = @_;
>  
> @@ -539,7 +514,7 @@ sub pmg_command {
>  }
>  
>  my $input;
> -while (defined($input = $term->readline("pmg:/$cdir> "))) {
> +while (defined($input = PVE::PTY::read_line("pmg:/$cdir> "))) {
>      chomp $input;
>  
>      next if $input =~ m/^\s*$/;
> @@ -548,12 +523,6 @@ while (defined($input = $term->readline("pmg:/$cdir> "))) {
>          exit(0);
>      }
>  
> -    # add input to history if it gets not
> -    # automatically added
> -    if (!$term->Features->{autohistory}) {
> -        $term->addhistory($input);
> -    }
> -
>      eval {
>          my $args = [shellwords($input)];
>          pmg_command($args);