Re: What was the reason for history -D not reporting runtimes?

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 27,  8:47am, Nikolai Weibull wrote:
}
} Oh boy.  Turns out extendedhistory wasn't on by default like I
} thought.  Anyway, even with it set it doesn't work.  Can appendhistory
} mess it up?
} 
} Also, why isn't histsavebycopy set by default, as the documentation
} suggests that it be set unless you have special needs?

Neither of these is set by default because historically (no pun) zsh and
other shells could [theoretically] all use the same history file. The two
options you mention would break backwards compatibility if they were set.

In almost every case of "why doesn't zsh do this fancy thing by default?"
the answer is "because people have been using zsh since about 1990 and we
don't want to unexpectedly break anyone's configuration on upgrade."

Yeah, I know, nowadays other software routinely breaks everything about a
past installation when you upgrade it, or at least requires you to go
through some kind of automated conversion process from which there is no
safe return short of restoring from a backup.  That doesn't mean I like
it when it happens.