If I type 'mplayer ' and press tab in a folder with only one video file, but multiple text files, does this shell autocomplete the media file? It's pretty frustrating that even the most basic stuff like these are not enabled by default on your average Linux distribution. I wonder if everyone simply stopped developing unix shells.
I'm aware that one can install support for proper autocompletion by installing additional stuff. That shouldn't be required, smart autocompletion should work out of the box. I don't want to configure and/or install stuff for every single application that I use.
Bash Completion[1] scripts are what provide this feature; perhaps fewer Linux distributions are including them. I recommend keeping them in your dotfiles[2] and loading them in your .bashrc[3]. This is nice because Bash Completion operates by filename, meaning you can take any project's bash completion script and install it at `$bash_completion/completions/script-name`.
I'm aware that one can install support for proper autocompletion by installing additional stuff. That shouldn't be required, smart autocompletion should work out of the box. I don't want to configure and/or install stuff for every single application that I use.