Re: [External] : Turning on savehist-mode by default

[Spencer Baugh]

Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com> writes:
> I can see three reasons for *not* saving histories:
>
> (1) risk of information disclosure if sensitive data such as passwords
> is stored in histories;
> (2) reduced startup performance if too much
> history gets accumulated; and
> (3) cross-process interference if the application is typically running
> in multiple instances.
>
> (1) is solved by a blacklist (opt-out for a few specific histories),
> (2) by pruning saved histories to some configurable maximum depth, and
> (3) by saying Emacs is not typically used like that[citation needed].

I agree with your problem statements and solutions.

To add further suggestions: maybe part of a solution for (2) would be
for emacs -Q to not load or save history (e.g. it doesn't enable
savehist-mode).  Possibly even also emacs -q.

That may also help with (3), because 99% of times I have multiple
Emacsen running, it's because I'm running a test emacs -Q or emacs -q.

(3) could also be solved by some intelligent merging of histories; it
would be relatively straightforward to merge the histories when saving
them.  Although probably unnecessary complexity - everyone has been
getting along fine without it.