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

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@xxxxxxxxx>]

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.

> 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.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras