It could be even furthermore separated from the traditional "source" and a
new keyword introduced like "require" a la lisp which would be able to do
things like:
1) load the file, searching in the BASH_LIB_PATH (or other variables) for a
file with optionally the extension .sh or .bash
2) only load the file if the "feature" as not been provided, eg only load
the file once
3) maybe optionally only load the definition and not execute commands
(something I've seen people asking for on several occasions on IRC), for
instance that would allow to have test code inside the lib file or maybe
print a warning that it's a library not to be executed. (No so important
imo)
I think this would benefit the bash_completion project and help them to
split the script so that the completion are only loaded on demand.
(one of the goal mentionned at http://bash-completion.alioth.debian.org/ is
"make bash-completion dynamically load completions")
My understanding is that the
http://code.google.com/p/bash-completion-lib/project did something
like this but that it was not working entirely as
they wanted.
(I hope some of the devs reads this list)
On the other hand, there is the possibility to add FPATH and autoload like
in ksh93 ...
I haven't think to much about it but my guess is that it would really be
easy to implement a module system with that.
my 2 cents....as I don't have piles of bash lib.