Re: [OT] Not clobbering bash history

[Arsen Arsenović]

Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de> writes:

> Moving to tangents ... please CC me.
>
> On 2023-11-22  04:32, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
>
>>> Should we suggest that the Bash developer add a feature to handle this
>>> case (multiple shells in parallel) the "right" way?  If many users
>>> would like it, that could make it worth building in.
>> 
>> That would be very nice.  This issue has almost been prolific enough to
>> force me to switch shells.
>
> This Bash-bashing made me curious, as I do not remember having issues
> with loss of its history, ever.

I do not partake in bash-bashing enthusiastically.  I'm a big fan of
readline and appreciate how reliable bash is.

> And that without such tricks as using an ever growing history file.  I
> just use "shopt -s histappend" and 4096 lines as HISTFILESIZE.  Plus I
> close my Bashes orderly before shutting down.  Plus I do not use Bash
> from Emacs, only in "real" terminals.  Eh, plus I rarely use nested
> Bashes.
>
> So given all that, is there a reproducer for this?

Unfortunately, I have been unable to produce a decent set of
reproduction steps.  This issue happens (relatively) infrequently and
inexplicably on my machines.  It pains me to complain without solid
information.

I also have shopt -s histappend set.

I suspect that something starts a bash process and does not set
histappend (--norc?), leading bash to override history.

I wonder whether, in general, if bash (libhistory?) was written with the
assumption of multiple processes writing to the history file, so that it
keeps its history in sync with other bash processes, problems of this
category would go away.
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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