Install: HISHTORY_PATH should also handle absolute paths, `install` should be documented in usage-help and README.

[dezza]

1. HISHTORY_PATH=/home/user/ results in /home/user/home/user/...

I think its quite the anti-pattern that it doesn't handle absolute paths. Yes, it is documented, but it is atypical and opposite to any other program using ENV vars this way for paths. I'd also argue it would make code less complex if you didn't handle relative paths, but if insisting on this functionality one could have both by look for a / prefix to determine whether its an absolute path.

2. install should be documented in usage-help.

hishtory -h

hiSHtory: Better shell history

Usage:
  hishtory [command]

History Searching
  export                  Export your shell history and display just the raw commands
  query                   Query your shell history and display the results in an ASCII art table
  tquery                  Interactively query your shell history in a TUI interface

History Management
  redact                  Query for matching commands and remove them from your shell history

Configuration
  config-add              Add a config option
  config-delete           Delete a config option
  config-get              Get the value of a config option
  config-set              Set the value of a config option
  disable                 Disable hiSHtory recording
  enable                  Enable hiSHtory recording
  init                    Re-initialize hiSHtory with a specified secret key

Additional Commands:
  completion              Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  export-json             Export history entries formatted in JSON lines format (as accepted by hishtory import-json, and easily parsable by other tools)
  help                    Help about any command
  import-json             Import history entries formatted in JSON lines format into hiSHtory
  start-web-ui            Serve a basic web UI for interacting with your shell history
  status                  View status info including the secret key which is needed to sync shell history from another machine
  syncing                 Configure syncing to enable or disable syncing with the hishtory backend
  uninstall               Completely uninstall hiSHtory and remove your shell history
  update                  Securely update hishtory to the latest version

Flags:
  -h, --help      help for hishtory
  -v, --version   version for hishtory

Use "hishtory [command] --help" for more information about a command.

hishtory install -h

Copy this binary to ~/.hishtory/ and configure your shell to use it for recording your shell history

Usage:
  hishtory install [flags]

Flags:
      --currently-installed-version string   The currently installed version (used by the update command)
  -h, --help                                 help for install
      --offline                              Install hiSHtory in offline mode with all syncing capabilities disabled
      --skip-config-modification             Skip modifying shell configs and instead instruct the user on how to modify their configs
      --skip-update-config-modification      Skip modifying shell configs for updates
$ 

3. Manual installation should be documented in README.

People should question and doubt any blackbox one-line installer and currently this is the only proposed option. I believe something like;

HISHTORY_PATH=.local/share/hishtory hishtory install --offline --skip-config-modification --skip-update-config-modification

Is what people are looking for, right after seeing the automatic installation.

[ddworken]

Hey! Thanks for the detailed feedback.

1. HISHTORY_PATH=/home/user/ results in /home/user/home/user/...

I definitely agree about the current behavior being not great, at the very least I'm going to start with #277 to ensure that people don't accidentally set HISHTORY_PATH to an absolute path. But in the long term, I agree, I should probably update this to sort absolute paths. Though it will take a bit of refactoring, so no promises on doing this immediately. :)

2. install should be documented in usage-help.
3. Manual installation should be documented in README.

👍 Agreed. I'll update this too.

[dezza]

Thanks! @ddworken I see you already did some commits, but I was going to offer my help as soon as I knew how you viewed the ideas - I can try to take a look at the relative paths to absolute path if that is the end goal? I also must add I really like what you have going here, especially because golang eh! You got a very nice foundation for a great system with both the web ui, the queries and the syncronization.

I have a very good idea for a feature btw that could make history much more reusable.

Usually all relative path/file commands like:

cd ./relative_dir
vim ./relative_file

Are useless in history once recalled, because they don't have the absolute path of course..

If.. Path, file arguments could be identified;

Then run readlink and realpath over it and converted to absolute paths.. A previous command recall would be far more useful..

[ddworken]

Ah, thank you! And sorry for sniping the commits, I'm always happy to accept contributions. :)

I can try to take a look at the relative paths to absolute path if that is the end goal?

Yeah, that would be great! The main thing would be to refactor data.GetHishtoryPath() to return an absolute path and update all the callers of it to respect this. You'd likely want to pass in a ctx to it so that it can call hctx.GetHome(ctx) to get the homedir in a way that doesn't require any special error handling.

I have a very good idea for a feature btw that could make history much more reusable.

Usually all relative path/file commands like:

cd ./relative_dir
vim ./relative_file

Are useless in history once recalled, because they don't have the absolute path of course..

If.. Path, file arguments could be identified;

Then run readlink and realpath over it and converted to absolute paths.. A previous command recall would be far more useful..

Hmm, is this covered by the ability to use control+x to cd into the cwd before running the command? E.g. if someone has vim relative-file in their history and they use control+x to select it, they'd get cd /whatever/the/cwd/was && vim relative-file as their command.

[dezza]

@ddworken hey, sorry for not getting back to this yet. I previously submitted a government application that is now in effect, need all my time for this with further requested documentation and comments that I need to ensure is as thorough as possible. Hopefully it shouldn't be more than a month at this point, there is a deadline for the next stage - I am awaiting this next stage in this process to set my time free, because then it will be decided.

This issue will be my first priority then! Thanks for your patience.

[dezza]

@ddworken I found some time now to make the change.

I have taken the liberty not to use the ctx. Is this an important requirement, or does it have purpose? The issue wth context.Context is that it stores everything untyped, so it is slow and heavy - is it absolutely necessary? Next I could take a look at how to refactor that, if you agree.

[dezza]

@ddworken also, can you elaborate on this trick that I do not know;

Hmm, is this covered by the ability to use control+x to cd into the cwd before running the command? E.g. if someone has vim relative-file in their history and they use control+x to select it, they'd get cd /whatever/the/cwd/was && vim relative-file as their command.

My C-x was unbound and I tried searching around couldn't find anything.

The idea was simply to expand all relative paths to absolute paths in history (as a feature). It would be nice with a plugin/hook platform for this kind of prehook (transform on save) thing.

[dezza]

@ddworken I'm currently working to fix issues with the unittests. I discovered 3 main problems;

1. make test|forcetest takes over parent shell and doesn't run the rest of the tests until you exit explictly - you have to do this for every test. (Do you run your tests a specific way?)
2. Running tests installs HISHTORY into the $HOME dir as if it was installed normally. It should be installed into /tmp
3. bash and zsh are lacking --norc and --noprofile args so your own environment, dotfiles and rc-files can affect the test env - not ideal.
4. HISHTORY_PATH should be set to something like /tmp/hishtory_tests and consistent in same folder with the other tests /tmp/client, /tmp/hishtory into the same folder..

Maybe you haven't encountered 1. are you running your tests a specific way or do you run make test from simply a bash shell? Maybe the issue with them taking over the parent shell is simply due to me using https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh which attaches to the terminal, at the end of bashrc, but I tested with a clean bash --norc --noprofile shell and saw the same issue - but I will soon have a conclusion as I am on track to fix it properly.

I have fixed all 3 issues, but I think it should be easier to apply this on top of the absolute path PR, because it gets messy to target /tmp relative from the build dir ../../../../ ...