PROMPT_COMMAND is probably already used for something else by your distro.
HISTFILESIZE and HISTSIZE can be set to -1 for unlimited.
Read man bash.
Better Bash History (2012)
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#42I set up my bash config to store history separately for each working directory (ie separate history files that I store under a $HOME/.bash_history_d directory) – so as I cd into a project directory, the history is populated with the commands that I've run within that directory . I find this super-helpful to remind me of the context for projects – cd in, then up-arrow to whatever that command is I usually run to launc…
This is lovely, and I should integrate it with the chronology based approach I've been using. I keep an infinite log by appending a timestamp to the beginning of the lines written to my history file, then merging this into a growing log with an hourly cronjob that runs sort -n | uniq on the file and the new version of the shell history. This way the shell history file is just a buffer. It doesn't get too big to cause…
But doesn’t that mess up the order of reverse-i-search?
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#43PROMPT_COMMAND is probably already used for something else by your distro. HISTFILESIZE and HISTSIZE can be set to -1 for unlimited. Read man bash.
HISTFILESIZE and HISTSIZE don't solve the abysmal bash history file handling when you have more than one bash open.
I would also like to know which distro clobbers user settable env variables.
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#44I set up my bash config to store history separately for each working directory (ie separate history files that I store under a $HOME/.bash_history_d directory) – so as I cd into a project directory, the history is populated with the commands that I've run within that directory . I find this super-helpful to remind me of the context for projects – cd in, then up-arrow to whatever that command is I usually run to launc…
zsh-histdb stores history inside a sqlite database instead of a simple text file.
The good thing is that it includes context: current directory, session, date.
I use it together with ssh-suggestions which can use SQL queries to find the most relevant command. You can program rules such as: use the most frequent command in that session, if you none do it for the current directory in the last 6 months, if not, search globally.
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#45To echo what everyone else is saying, get FZF. Most of these linux productivity things are just some dumb pet project that solves a specific problem that a specific person finds annoying. FZF is not this - it makes something you do hundreds of times a day (history and file opening on zsh, bash, fish, whatever) indisputably better. If you find yourself sitting there tapping ctrl+r multiple times like an idiot for some…
Yup, I tried the context aware history for couple of days and it got annoying pretty fast. I have everything in one file which I can just FZF reverse search and bam. No need for infinite up arrows.
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#46I set up my bash config to store history separately for each working directory (ie separate history files that I store under a $HOME/.bash_history_d directory) – so as I cd into a project directory, the history is populated with the commands that I've run within that directory . I find this super-helpful to remind me of the context for projects – cd in, then up-arrow to whatever that command is I usually run to launc…
Thank you for this. It always amazes me when I come across something that would be so useful to me, and yet so obvious in hindsight.
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#47Because this comes up every so often, I'll post this link again: I wrote a little widget that stores your bash history in a sqlite db. I haven't touched it in a while because I now rely on fzf and this doesn't integrate with it, though maybe I could make it do... https://github.com/thenewwazoo/bash-history-sqlite
This is cool, somebody recently suggested that I add history to sqlite in Oil [1]. I looked at your code but I didn't see how it integrates with bash?
Most people seem to be using the PROMPT_COMMAND hook for stuff like this -- are you using something else, or did I miss it?
https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues/320
I will add PROMPT_COMMAND to Oil, but I'm curious if there is something else I should add to support end-user customization.
One thing that might be interesting is to support a hook for the ! syntax, so the sqlite DB could be searched. I think that would solve some of the problems you mention in the code's comments, and maybe the fzf issue. (Although that literally just occurred to me, I don't promise to do this :) )
I haven't looked at how fzf works exactly. But if you want to chat about it please chime in on Github :)
[1] Latest status: Success With the Interactive Shell http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/02/05.html . Oil runs a bunch of interactive programs like bash-completion, virtualenv, and git-prompt!
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#48I set up my bash config to store history separately for each working directory (ie separate history files that I store under a $HOME/.bash_history_d directory) – so as I cd into a project directory, the history is populated with the commands that I've run within that directory . I find this super-helpful to remind me of the context for projects – cd in, then up-arrow to whatever that command is I usually run to launc…
I've done the same thing, and I've found it super helpful. My particular configuration is at https://github.com/YenTheFirst/dotfiles/blob/master/.bash_cd... 90% of the time, the bash history is super relevant to the current context. A small amount of the time, I remember that I issued a command, but not in which directory - in these cases, I can just search the history directory, and get both the context of what the…
Thanks, reading over that code was useful. In particular I realized that my Oil project (a bash-compatible shell [1]) doesn't support PROMPT_COMMAND, which tons of people appear to be using.
https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues/320
It seems like a weird hack but apparently it works for tons of things!
[1] Latest status: Success With the Interactive Shell http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/02/05.html . Oil runs a bunch of interactive programs like bash-completion, virtualenv, and git-prompt.
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#49I set up my bash config to store history separately for each working directory (ie separate history files that I store under a $HOME/.bash_history_d directory) – so as I cd into a project directory, the history is populated with the commands that I've run within that directory . I find this super-helpful to remind me of the context for projects – cd in, then up-arrow to whatever that command is I usually run to launc…
> Anyone else done something similar?
I'm not, but now that you mention this, I think I will. I already use direnv all over the place, and this would be a pretty natural extension. Thanks!
Re: Better Bash History (2012)
#50highly recommended for fellow ctrl-r addicts: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
I also recommend FZF. Really very handy for doing CTRL-R searches. I also use it for doing interactive git rebases. I have an alias for doing a fuzzy rebase interactive (frbi): frbi = !git rebase -i $(git log --pretty=oneline --color=always | fzf --ansi | cut -d ' ' -f1)^
This is a great idea, thanks for it! I've done similar things with using fzf to git add, git diff, and so on, but I hadn't thought of using it to pick a commit to rebase from.
I made a few changes so I figured I'd post them back here in case you're interested:
pick-commit = # equivalent to your git log... cut...
rif = "!f() { rev=$(git pick-commit); [[ $rev ]] && git ri $rev~; }; f"
While I'm here, here are my similar git aliases for adding, diffing, etc. files using fzf:
pick-status-files = "!f() { git status -z | xargs -0n1 | cut -c4- | fzi --print0 | xargs -0to git "$@"; }; f"
af = !git pick-status-files add
# and so on for diff, difftool, checkout, etc.
fzf --height 30% --reverse --multi "$@"