bash completion enabled by default (or move to another package)

Fixed. Great!

How? Are you releasing a separate package? Is it enabled for everybody by default? Could explain the solution?

On Hardy the problem reappeared. Please verify.

The way it is supposed to work is as follows:

In /etc/skel/.bashrc we have the following:
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

This was added in version: 3.1-3 in March 2006. So this was active since edgy at least. And it is still present on my hardy installation.

The files in /etc/skel are copied into the home directories of new users. However this will not change anything for old users. So if you have a user account that was created before edgy or have edited/overwritten your ~/.bashrc then you may not have these lines in your ~/.bashrc. In this case take a look at the file /etc/skel/.bashrc and copy the relevant lines into your ~/.bashrc.

I hope this helps you. Let me know if you have more questions.

In /etc/skel/.bashrc (Hardy Alpha6) I have the lines you mentioned.
But bash completion was commented out in /etc/bash.bashrc AND did not work (which was nerve wrecking) until I installed the package bash-completion and uncommented it.
Note that this problem was confirmed by many people in #ubuntu+1 irc channel.
I will test it without the package, and without the package + lines commented out.

Thanks.
PS: personally I prefer Fish, but bash is the standard.

I think the reason it was done this way is this:

If you uncomment the lines in /etc/bash.bashrc the *every* user on the system will have bash_completion enabled. This is bad because there is no easy way to disable it again. So the solution is to activate it in the user's .bashrc. If he does not want it he can just comment out the lines. But Ubuntu never touches the files in your home directory, so if you have a .bashrc with those lines in it (be it because your user account is from pre-edgy, or because you use a custom .bashrc), then it won't be enabled and this is intended.

If you want it enabled just include the three lines quoted above.

So the behaviour you see is expected. Please also note that this works for new installs or new user accounts. But there is no way Ubuntu will mess with the existing users' ~/.bashrc files, so you will have to do this yourself.