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I like keeping _all_ my shell history, with timestamps. Even the fuckups. It's come in handy a few times now * Looking back at my old process for onboarding in

I like keeping _all_ my shell history, with timestamps. Even the fuckups. It's come in handy a few times now * Looking back at my old process for onboarding into some new technology. I can easily see how my technique evolved as I optimized for more correctness (e.g. cp -r vs cp -rp vs rsync with whatever flags does everything I want, I know I want the most recent incantation) * Figure out the exact process I did for a backup or other movement of data when I want to ensure I have copied X, Y, and Z. Sometimes my shell history has saved me where my notes have failed.

jhgorrell 1y ago
I have most of my shell history back to 2005(?). Each terminal gets its own new history file. 99% of the time, I never look at it, but when I do need to look at it, it has been great. My boss once asked me: "What args and screening file did we use when we made that one-off DB 4 months ago?" Was able to check and confirm it was correct. Or for personal use: "Where did I move that folder of pictures?"
- PeterWhittaker 1y ago
  I opted for a single history across all sessions on any given host: On my main machine, the first of 54,434 entries is timestamped 2020-08-22:12:39, while on the machine on which I do most development at the moment (it varies from product to product and release to release), the first of 34,771 entries is timestamped 2023-05-08:11:34. For the curious, the salient .bashrc bits are: function _setAndReloadHistory { builtin history -a builtin history -c builtin history -r } # preserve shell history set -o history # preserve multiline commands... shopt -s cmdhist # preserve multiline command as literally as possible shopt -s lithist # reedit failed history substitutions shopt -s histreedit # enforce careful mode... we'll see how this goes shopt -s histverify # timestamp all history entries HISTTIMEFORMAT='%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M ' # not the default, we like to be explicit that we are not using defaults HISTFILE=~/.bash_eternal_history # preserve all history, forever HISTSIZE=-1 # preserve all history, forever, on disk HISTFILESIZE=-1 # record only one instance of a command repeated after itself HISTCONTROL=ignoredups # preserve history across/between shell sessions... # ...when the shell exits... shopt -s histappend # ...and after every command... PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; } _setAndReloadHistory" EDIT: Remembered just after submitting that since I am on MacOS, I ran the command touch ~/.bash_sessions_disable back on August 22nd, 2020, to prevent Terminal from saving per-session information. I've never cleaned out ~/.bash_sessions, suppose I should, but it hasn't been updated since that day.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    You might also want to add one improvement: Write commands to history files before running the commands instead of after the commands finish: trap 'history -a' DEBUG Or if you already have a DEBUG trap: trap "history -a ; $(trap -p DEBUG | cut -d "'" -f 2)" DEBUG

jhgorrell 1y ago

I have most of my shell history back to 2005(?). Each terminal gets its own new history file. 99% of the time, I never look at it, but when I do need to look at it, it has been great. My boss once asked me: "What args and screening file did we use when we made that one-off DB 4 months ago?" Was able to check and confirm it was correct. Or for personal use: "Where did I move that folder of pictures?"

PeterWhittaker 1y ago
I opted for a single history across all sessions on any given host: On my main machine, the first of 54,434 entries is timestamped 2020-08-22:12:39, while on the machine on which I do most development at the moment (it varies from product to product and release to release), the first of 34,771 entries is timestamped 2023-05-08:11:34. For the curious, the salient .bashrc bits are: function _setAndReloadHistory { builtin history -a builtin history -c builtin history -r } # preserve shell history set -o history # preserve multiline commands... shopt -s cmdhist # preserve multiline command as literally as possible shopt -s lithist # reedit failed history substitutions shopt -s histreedit # enforce careful mode... we'll see how this goes shopt -s histverify # timestamp all history entries HISTTIMEFORMAT='%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M ' # not the default, we like to be explicit that we are not using defaults HISTFILE=~/.bash_eternal_history # preserve all history, forever HISTSIZE=-1 # preserve all history, forever, on disk HISTFILESIZE=-1 # record only one instance of a command repeated after itself HISTCONTROL=ignoredups # preserve history across/between shell sessions... # ...when the shell exits... shopt -s histappend # ...and after every command... PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; } _setAndReloadHistory" EDIT: Remembered just after submitting that since I am on MacOS, I ran the command touch ~/.bash_sessions_disable back on August 22nd, 2020, to prevent Terminal from saving per-session information. I've never cleaned out ~/.bash_sessions, suppose I should, but it hasn't been updated since that day.
- pabs3 1y ago
  You might also want to add one improvement: Write commands to history files before running the commands instead of after the commands finish: trap 'history -a' DEBUG Or if you already have a DEBUG trap: trap "history -a ; $(trap -p DEBUG | cut -d "'" -f 2)" DEBUG