Running Commands in VS Code Terminal does not save the history

[shalearkane]

Running commands in a normal bash terminal retains the history (of the commands ran) but the same is not true for VS Code. So after closing VSCode all of the command history is deleted and the user has to remember any complex command that they ran. Ideally we would want our history to be stored in .bash_history or if VS Code doesn't want to touch user files, in .vscode_bash_history perhaps?

[meganrogge]

This works for me

[hameer-spire]

Doesn't work for me either, tried deleting $HOME/.vscode-server and re-installing, no dice.

[meganrogge]

Maybe this is a remote issue

[Tyriar]

More reports here: #180474

[vaindil]

This affects me on my MacBook Pro as well. It's a problem 100% of the time, it's not intermittent. I'm guessing it's not a remote issue, as it happens when I'm using a completely local folder without any sort of remote functionality. There are several other reports of this issue in #180474 as well.

If I type exit to close the terminal before I quit VS Code, the history is saved like it should be. If I quit VS Code without doing that, the history is lost. This is a recent issue (within the last couple of months or so), it used to work correctly. Happy to provide any other info that can help diagnose this, as I can always reproduce it.

[shalearkane]

Yes, the history save feature works if I type exit or ctrl+D to close the terminal. Doing it by any other way (like clicking the trash button to close the terminal) does not save the history.

[shalearkane]

I think that I have found the issue.

vscode/src/vs/platform/terminal/node/terminalProcess.ts

Line 378 in 704ed70

this._ptyProcess.kill(!isWindows ? 'SIGKILL' : undefined);

In this line, we are sending SIGKILL instead of SIGTERM, hence the process gets killed without the chance to write the history to the file (source)

However it seems that this change was made because the terminal subprocess (running shellIntegration-bash.sh) couldn't be killed because the traps are also gobbling up any signal. Hence this issue #176819

I think the solution to this can be done by creating a function something like :

cleanup() {
    err=$?
    trap '' EXIT INT TERM
    exit $err 
}
sig_cleanup() {
    trap '' EXIT
    false # sets $?
    cleanup
}

trap sig_cleanup TERM

(relevant discussion in SO)
That way, the SIGTERM signal can be intercepted and exited as needed.

[shalearkane]

If it is possible, could you help me to write a patch to fix this issue? 😄 I have tried patching the __vsc_get_trap() function in the file src/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/browser/media/shellIntegration-bash.sh to trap SIGTERM however, I am having trouble getting it to work.