Re: Turning on savehist-mode by default

[Po Lu]

Spencer Baugh <sbaugh@catern.com> writes:

> I agree that outdated completion history is a nuisance.  However,
> isn't outdated completion history better than none?

Not as I see it.  When M-p is typed and Emacs cannot supply a proper
history entry, it should ding rather than begin iterating over hundreds
of outdated entries.

> I definitely find the bash history experience extremely annoying.  It
> happens even when bash is exited cleanly - it's just a consequence of
> the fact that bash overwrites the previous history when exiting,
> rather than combining them in some way.
>
> Emacs isn't commonly run in parallel, and when it is, at least for me
> there's always one main Emacs instance which outlives the others.  So
> we shouldn't have the bash experience.  But still: I'd be happy to
> implement some history merging behavior so we don't get the bash
> history experience, if that's a requirement for savehist-mode to be
> turned on by default.

Yes.  Despite this not being completely orthodox practice, we know many
users follow it; search for threads on major Emacs forums concerning
startup time, and you will recognize the pervasiveness of short,
ephemeral Emacs sessions.