Clink settings and history file changed

[i-s-o]

Purpose of the issue

• Bug report (encountered problems/errors)

Version Information

1.3.17

Description of the issue

The new version of Clink appears to have revamped its settings system:

1. Instead of %CMDER_USER_CONFIG%\settings, it is now %CMDER_USER_CONFIG%\clink_settings (i.e. the default settings or existing settings are not picked up).
2. The actual names of settings keys are now different (e.g. history.max_lines instead of history_file_lines).
3. The history is now saved to %CMDER_USER_CONFIG%\clink_history instead of %CMDER_USER_CONFIG%\.history.
   a. the .history file is ignored for existing installations
   b. history command (i.e. alias) is not working properly

See: https://chrisant996.github.io/clink/clink.html#configuring-clink

Old

C:\tools\cmder
λ clink set
Available options:

ctrld_exits ............... 1      Pressing Ctrl-D exits session
esc_clears_line ........... 1      Toggle if pressing Esc clears line
match_colour .............. -1     Match display colour
exec_match_style .......... 2      Executable match style
space_prefix_match_files .. 1      Whitespace prefix matches files
prompt_colour ............. -1     Colour of the prompt
terminate_autoanswer ...... 0      Auto-answer terminate prompt
history_file_lines ........ 10000  Lines of history saved to disk
history_ignore_space ...... 0      Skip adding lines prefixed with whitespace
history_dupe_mode ......... 0      Controls how duplicate entries are handled
history_io ................ 1      Read/write history file each line edited
history_expand_mode ....... 3      Sets how command history expansion is applied
use_altgr_substitute ...... 1      Support Windows' Ctrl-Alt substitute for AltGr
strip_crlf_on_paste ....... 2      Strips CR and LF chars on paste
ansi_code_support ......... 1      Enables basic ANSI escape code support

Settings path: C:\tools\cmder\config/settings

New

C:\tools\cmder
λ clink set
clink.paste_crlf                 space
clink.path
clink.promptfilter               True
cmd.auto_answer                  off
cmd.ctrld_exits                  True
color.cmd                        bold
color.doskey                     bright cyan
color.filtered                   bold
color.hidden
color.input
color.interact                   bold
color.modmark
color.readonly
doskey.enhanced                  True
exec.cwd                         True
exec.dirs                        True
exec.enable                      True
exec.path                        True
exec.space_prefix                True
files.hidden                     True
files.system                     False
files.unc_paths                  False
history.dont_add_to_history_cmd  exit history
history.dupe_mode                erase_prev
history.expand_mode              not_quoted
history.ignore_space             True
history.max_lines                5000
history.save                     True
history.shared                   False
lua.break_on_error               False
lua.break_on_traceback           False
lua.debug                        False
lua.path
lua.traceback_on_error           False
match.ignore_case                relaxed
match.sort_dirs                  with
match.wild                       True
readline.hide_stderr             False
terminal.emulation               auto
terminal.modify_other_keys       True

[daxgames]

It never fails. Will take a look.

[chrisant996]

I assume Clink v1.x pre-release builds are being included because v0.4.9 has too many issues, e.g. the hooking crash?

While it's intentional that Clink behaves differently now, maybe there's a way to do a migration and/or a change in Cmder that could make the transition more automatic.

Anyway, I'll take a look this evening.

[daxgames]

Thats what I was thinking as well.

[daxgames]

Just FYI. I updated the release with a note regarding this issue.

@chrisant996

I was starting to look into how to have Cmder's init.bat migrate Clink settings and history when I realized I would need a lot of help from you translating Cmders default Clink vendor/settings.default file to a new vendor/clink_settings.default THEN I noticed you opened an enhancement request on Clink to possibly migrate settings and history.

Thank you for your support.

[chrisant996]

Clink v1.1.14 includes automatic migration.

History should be fully migrated.
Settings should be migrated as much as possible.

The documentation now has a section on upgrading, and has various compatibility notes called out.

[chrisant996]

@i-s-o can you clarify this point:

3. b. history command (i.e. alias) is not working properly

Can you describe specifically what about the history command isn't working properly?
Or did you just mean that since history wasn't migrated, naturally there's nothing for the history command to report?

Thank you for reporting the issue! Hopefully v1.1.14 addresses the migration issues (see previous comment).

Since you already have clink_history and clink_settings files now, to make migration happen you'll have to delete those two files manually. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[daxgames]

Cmder defaults provide a doskey alias for the history command like:

history=cat -n "%CMDER_ROOT%\config\.history"

In my testing of 1.1.10 it seems the new clink_history filename appears to be variable? I currently have a clink_history, clink_history_[nnnn], and a clink_history_[nnn]~.

Testing 1.1.14 now.

[daxgames]

Changing the Cmder history doskey alias for history to history=clink history results in:

dgames@DTG-SP4 ~\cmder - dev (master -> origin) λ alias history=clink history

dgames@DTG-SP4 ~\cmder - dev (master -> origin) λ history
'clink' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

It seems Clink history is now kept in two files clink_history(previous session history), and clink_history_[nnnn](current_session history). Typing clink history combines these two into a session specific history and outputs the indexed list to the screen.

I am doing the following to resolve the history command issue.

From the command line:

alias history="^%cmder_root^%\vendor\clink\clink.bat" history

which results in an alias like:

dgames@DTG-SP4 ~\cmder - dev (master -> origin) λ alias history
history="%cmder_root%\vendor\clink\clink.bat" history

I will also make init.bat migrate this alias to the new 1.x.x clink alias and change it in the Cmder default aliases file.

All available in a future release.

[daxgames]

Testing 1.1.14:

1. I deleted my %cmder_root%\config\clink_history and %cmder_root%\config\clink_settings files.
2. Launching a new session Clink migrated my %cmder_root%\config\.history file to %cmder_root%\config\clink_history and left the %cmder_root%\config\.history file.
3. Did nothing to my %cmder_root%\config\settings file so I do not have a %cmder_root%\config\clink_settings.

The %cmder_root%\config\settings file derives from the %cmder_root%\vendor\clink_settings.default file. I assume since settings is a best effort migration there is nothing to migrate?

[daxgames]

Try artifacts from here: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/MartiUK/cmder/builds/36991693/artifacts

[chrisant996]

Oh, I see.

1. Clink itself defines a history alias with various flags and commands. Cmder can simply do nothing, and then the history command should work.

2. Clink has two history modes, described in the docs. In shared mode all instances share a single master history file, and an instance sees new commands from the other instances as soon as it starts a new prompt. In non-shared mode each instance has a separate session history file, and session files aren't appended to the master file until their session ends. This ensures each session's own history always appears at the tail of the history in that session.

3. Migration for settings is "lazy" or "on read". In other words, reading always migrates old settings -- they aren't "locked in" until you run clink set and change a setting. This choice was intended to avoid race conditions if you start multiple Clink instances at once -- so that they don't contend with each other all trying to update the settings concurrently. It's possible to add locking and force writing a new clink_setting file, that just gets more complicated is all.

[daxgames]

@chrisant996 If I type clink set history.shared true Clink writes the below to the %cmder_root%\config\clink_settings file.

# name: Shell command completions
# type: color
color.cmd = bold

# name: Doskey completions
# type: color
color.doskey = bright cyan

# name: Filtered completion color
# type: color
color.filtered = bold

# name: For user-interaction prompts
# type: color
color.interact = bold

# name: Message area color
# type: color
color.message = default

# name: Sets how command history expansion is applied
# type: enum
# options: off,on,not_squoted,not_dquoted,not_quoted
history.expand_mode = not_dquoted

# name: Skip adding lines prefixed with whitespace
# type: boolean
history.ignore_space = False

# name: The number of history lines to save
# type: integer
history.max_lines = 10000

# name: Share history between instances
# type: boolean
history.shared = True

The above file contents contain the setting I manually set of history.shared = true as well as settings migrated from my original %cmder_root%\config\settings file like history.max_lines = 10000

I assume this is my new %cmder_root%\vendor\clink_settings.default file based on the lazy migration you described above?

[daxgames]

I have changed the fix PR #2452 again. New binaries to try: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/MartiUK/cmder/builds/36993661/artifacts