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Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3] FAQ: sync newuser-install



On 8/24/22 15:11, Felipe Contreras wrote:
On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 1:33 PM Eric Cook <llua@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On 8/24/22 13:32, Felipe Contreras wrote:
On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 4:12 AM Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Felipe Contreras wrote on Wed, 24 Aug 2022 04:31 +00:00:
Better to use the same HISTFILE in both.

Agreed, but...

+++ b/Etc/FAQ.yo
@@ -1629,7 +1629,7 @@ label(321)
     In zsh, you need to set the location where you want the history to be written
     with tt($HISTFILE).  For example,
     verb(
-    HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
+    HISTFILE=~/.histfile

The default name should include "zsh" somewhere for coexistence with
other programs.  So, I'd rather keep the FAQ as-is.

I agree having a '.zsh_' prefix is more consistent with other
programs, but then that's what should be in the newuser-install
script, no?

I actually think this should be the default, no need for *everyone* to
specify this.

Yes *everyone* should specify it.

Why?

All programs dump their history by default. Node, python, ruby, less,
mariadb, and of course bash and ksh. Those are the ones that I can
easily find.
To avoid the problem i mentioned, also there are existing users that like
the current behavior since they do not use shell history. at work i don't use it.

Aside from the arbitrary bump in HISTSIZE, if HISTFILE is set by default and
zsh is invoked with -f which is common when debugging or testing you get the
expected defaults. But if the user typically increases SAVEHIST from said
default, because regardless of what you set it to, people will change it to
their preference, you create the same problem that other shells like bash have,
the truncation of HISTFILE to the default SAVEHIST upon the exit of that zsh -f session.
usually without the user noticing for a period of time.

So because of this corner case that 99.99% of people are never going
to hit we should bother 100% of users. It doesn't seem like an issue
worthy of so much consideration. Moreover, it could be solved in other
ways, like not setting HISTFILE when NO_RCS is on.

Starting the shell without your dotfiles is commonly given advice when troubleshooting
weird behavior, found across this mailing list, places like stackexchange and irc,
It's not a corner case.






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