zsh-histdb

For those of you on zsh, I have been a big fan of https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb It is written entirely in shell script, with the only dependency being sqlite itself.

If you are open to using zsh, take a look at https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb . It stores your zsh history in a sqlite3 db. The benefit of this is that your history is well-structured and indexed, and that you can use SQL to query it. The working directory, exit status, and more are included, so you can easily implement your own smart history tools.

I strongly recommend storing your shell history in a database, but if you're more of a minimalist, you might want to look at zsh-histdb[0]. It only support zsh, and doesn't have cloud syncing, but its also written entirely in shell script, doesn't have "accounts" or rely on sponsors, and it is far simpler. I have been using it for years and it has been absolute bliss. Whenever I run a command, it is immediately available in the history for all of my shells, and I no longer have commands disappear from my history unexpectedly. [0] https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

zsh-histdb achieves something similar. Combined with zsh-autosuggestions it's quite nice. https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

Totally agree with this. I use https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb slightly modified to work more smoothly for me. If I remember correctly, I tried Atuin but it messed up multi-line commands. Zsh-histdb handles them well.

I use zsh-histdb which stores the history in SQLite with context. Then I have few different queries/ways to interact with it. For example I have a line completion (which also shows as grayed out text while I type) based on most frequently used commands with give prefix with additional weighting depending how close in the directory tree they were used. [0]: https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

The article briefly mentions atuin at the end. I've tried atuin but found it a little bit too heavyweight for me - instead I use zsh-histdb[0] (together with the fzf extension for it[1]) which allows you to easily answer this type of question - can highly recommend it. 0. https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb 1. https://github.com/m42e/zsh-histdb-fzf

I have been using this, which is similar, for a few years: https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

I often have multiple concurrent sessions of terminal open, which leads to messed up history interactions. One solution I've encountered (but have not tested yet) is zsh-histdb [0]. It stores sessions' history to a SQLite db instead of a single appended file, with extra metadata about when commands were run, what session, etc. If you've already got your .zshrc file open to mess with the history settings it might be worth checking out that tool while you're at it. 0: https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

I use zsh-histdb[1], which records my entire shell history for all time in a database, which also stores: • The start and stop times of the command • The working directory where the command was run • The hostname of the machine • A unique per-host session ID, so history from several sessions is not confused • The exit status of the command This the working directory of the command has been especially useful for me to get the context of what I did, not only the command itself. [1] - https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

Alternatives (without judgement): https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/jcsalterego/historian https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb + https://github.com/m42e/zsh-histdb-fzf https://github.com/ellie/atuin All of these except the OP (I think) use SQLite databases. Personally I use zsh-histdb, which is great but only for ZSH. I'm working on adding a rich SQLite history to nushell so I can finally try nu: https://github.com/nushell/reedline/pull/401 .

Do you know how zsh-histdb compares to similar projects?(quick google…) https://github.com/cantino/mcfly https://github.com/ellie/atuin https://loshadki.app/shellhistory/ https://github.com/AlexanderThaller/hstdb https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb

Here is a zsh function (added to ~/.zshrc) I made for use with https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb to get the same effect, but only showing commands whose exit_status is 0: jog() { sqlite3 $HOME/.histdb/zsh-history.db " SELECT replace(commands.argv, ' ', ' ') FROM commands JOIN history ON history.command_id = commands.id JOIN places ON history.place_id = places.id WHERE history.exit_status = 0 AND dir = '${PWD}' AND places.host = '${HOST}' AND commands.argv != 'jog' AND commands.argv NOT LIKE 'z %' AND commands.argv NOT LIKE 'cd %' AND commands.argv != '..' ORDER BY start_time DESC LIMIT 10 " }

I always respect when people take the time to put a small but useful thing like this up in a repo by itself. It has always been a frustration that the current working directory metadata isn't saved along with history entries, so you can never really reconstruct what was run. Edit: I should really try out https://github.com/larkery/zsh-histdb. There's no reason a modern system's history shouldn't store start and finish timestamps, return code, current working directory, etc.