Re: One $HISTFILE to rule them all

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 9 Mar 2009 10:05:40 -0400
TjL <luomat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> SHAMELESS PLUG: If you haven't signed up yet, use this link
> 
> http://tr.im/dropboxsignup
> aka
> https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE4NDE0OQ~~
> 
> and you'll get 2.25GB instead of 2.0GB (and I get some extra space too)

I've just done that.  It's lucky I found
http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/TextBasedLinuxInstall or it would
have been just another form of uploadable remote storage...

> Is there a way for me to change my $HISTFILE to something like
> ~/Dropbox/Zsh/History.txt and have zsh save the history from any shell
> on any computer to the same file?
> 
> I wasn't sure how $HISTFILE would react to being written to from
> several different places.

It should "just work" as long as you leave a dropbox-sized gap (which
appears to be of the order of a minute or so) between doing anything on a
system with one copy and a system with another copy, so that they stay
synced without confusion over who's written what---there's no way of doing
file locking since you're always at the mercy of that time lag whatever you
write; you just can't tell what files are currently visible on another
synced system.  This is pretty obvious and applies to all files down there.
Other than that, I can't offhand see any new issues compared with other
forms of syncing history between multiple computers, which many of us have
been doing for a long time.

By the way, leaking information from another thread entirely on zsh-workers
(starts zsh-workers/26702):

Bart wrote:
> } Obviously any alternative opinions would be useful.  Currently that
> } means Bart, but both of us would be very interested in getting new
> } apprentice source code gurus...
>
> Leak some of that sentiment onto zsh-users.  Maybe potential apprentices
> just aren't reading -workers.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>                  Software Engineer
CSR PLC, Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cowley Road
Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070