Live data from Hacker News

Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

github.com

181–190 of 198 posts

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#181

Why would you want syncing? Different machines have different file layouts and different installed executables. Any common commands are either coincidental or part of some fleet operation better managed through an actual remote management system.

I'm a software engineer, not a sysadmin. My use of the shell is to run my software and git, not setup systems. YMMV

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#182

Is there a Windows/Powershell port coming anytime soon? Honestly this is the one tool missing from my macOS workflow that I can't cross plat yet.

I think it actually works on Windows/powershell for now. We can't guarantee it because we can't test it, but we have a windows user who is always submitting fixes for windows

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#183
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's this little gotcha you might want to be aware of: https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/752#issuecomment-14518...

Can you tell me if my understanding of this issue is correct? Let's say I run a command where I've pasted in a credential from my password manager: ` some-cli login username my-secret-password` (note space at beginning) Normally this would prevent the command from getting saved in any meaningful way in my bash history, so that if I later run a malicious script, it can't collect secrets from my bash history. With the…

correct

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#184
post #53

I found atuin introduced friction where there wasn't any before, so I stopped using it and reverted to ripgrepping zsh_history.

Do you remember what that friction point was?

There is a noticeable delay experienced from when I press the up arrow and the list appears. This was the largest friction point. Then, once the list appears, it needs to be filtered to reach a desired pattern. Narrowing down the selection and experiencing real-time shifting in results distracts from the goal of history finding. I found these hurdles lead the results that still were not as accurate as simply ripgrepping against zsh_history.

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#185

The problem I see is that if I ssh into 5 different remote hosts in a day, most of the commands are not executed on my host and thus not part of the local (or shared, distributed) history. I suppose this could be solved with either: - Some kind of modified ssh that sends back the commands to my host - Some kind of smart terminal that can analyze commands to build up the history Any ideas on how to practically solve t…

same concern. I will probably use atuin local because it seems so cool. but the beauty of the shell is that it is by default so universal and portable and small, so I don't like the idea of dependencies for my use of it on remote machines. mentally I've gotten used to the idea that my local shell env is a very different beast than "normal " shell.

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#186

I always wondered if one could feed history into some abstract parser (or nowadays, maybe a LLM) to extract the most frequent "idioms": ls | grep | less vs ls ~ | grep .bak | less ls .config | grep *rc | less you get the idea

this might be a way to improve the default nix toolset in a way worth globalizing, it seems like it has the same philosophy. Discovering missing tools... it's like discovering new primes :)

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#187
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most stemming use cases are trivially solved with a regex. That's the point he was making. The difference between a beginner and expert with regexes is quite a lot.

Ahhh, interesting point. "We could learn advanced regexes... or we could just use FTS5". Hard call. :)

Well, I suppose what's trivial for me might be advanced for you :)

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#188
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh, interesting point. "We could learn advanced regexes... or we could just use FTS5". Hard call. :)

Well, I suppose what's trivial for me might be advanced for you :)

For regexes, definitely. ;)

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#189
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most stemming use cases are trivially solved with a regex. That's the point he was making. The difference between a beginner and expert with regexes is quite a lot.

Ahhh, interesting point. "We could learn advanced regexes... or we could just use FTS5". Hard call. :)

Maybe! Full-text search is great for text. Command lines have some things in common with text, but they definitely aren't normal text. E.g., punctuation is much more significant. Stemming may not be appropriate. Case matters. Word boundaries are different, and many of the significant lumps aren't really words.

Re: Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database

#190

There's also McFly which does the same thing. https://github.com/cantino/mcfly I've only used McFly and found it to be pretty great. My only complaint is the default search mode is SQL strings, so you have to use `%` for wildcards. I wish it was a more forgiving, less exact search. Has anyone used both and could compare them?

+1 for this request. McFly user, keen to know to difference
Post reply on HN