`~/.bash_history` is truncated.

[your-diary]

Describe the bug

It seems copilot executes shell commands via bash without first loading ~/.bashrc.

So, even if users explictly set HISTFILESIZE=-1 in ~/.bashrc to customize the max number of lines of ~/.bash_history, running a shell command once via copilot truncates ~/.bash_history to 1000 lines or so.

This problem does not occur on codex.

Affected version

0.0.352 Commit: e743766

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. In one terminal, check the number of lines of ~/.bash_history.

   In my case:

   $ wc -l ~/.bash_history
   
   375136 /Users/user/.bash_history

2. In another terminal, run copilot and type Run "echo hello".

3. Then copilot runs echo hello for you.

4. In the terminal used in the step 1, re-check the number of lines

   $ wc -l ~/.bash_history
   
   1004 /Users/user/.bash_history

---

By the way, after the truncation, ~/.bash_history includes

{
    echo ___BEGIN___COMMAND_OUTPUT_MARKER___;
    PS1="";
    PS2="";
    EC=$?;
    echo "___BEGIN___COMMAND_DONE_MARKER___$EC";
}

, which I'm sure is derived from copilot:

$ rg -o '___BEGIN___COMMAND_OUTPUT_MARKER___' ~/.npm/bin/copilot

995:___BEGIN___COMMAND_OUTPUT_MARKER___

Expected behavior

~/.bash_history should not be truncated.

Additional context

No response

[niik]

Hey @your-diary, thanks for reaching out! You're right that we're running bash with the --no-rc and --noprofile flags to execute shell tool calls. We discussed this and came to the conclusion that we shouldn't be writing to bash_history at all for the shell tool calls as we wrap them with a bunch of boilerplate to simplify parsing so they end up not being suited for shell reuse anyway. I've got a PR open to suppress writing to history which will also fix your truncation issue. I'll update once it's been merged

[ahmaze]

Hi @niik thanks for the excellent tool. Writing stuff to bash_history is a bit disruptive in particular when using Ctrl+r to navigate my history.

My workaround at the minute is to do the following:

export HISTFILE=/tmp/dontcare && copilot

[niik]

I've got a PR open to suppress writing to history which will also fix your truncation issue. I'll update once it's been merged

Following up to say this got merged and was published in version 0.0.362! copilot shouldn't write to bash or powershell history any more. Thanks for the kind words, gonna close this out!

[mathijs81]

This is still a problem for me (using version v.0.0.394) on Ubuntu 24.04.3.

$ cat ~/.bash_history | wc -l
112132
$ copilot
╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│  ╭─╮╭─╮                                                                                          │
│  ╰─╯╰─╯  GitHub Copilot v0.0.394                                                                 │
│  █ ▘▝ █  Describe a task to get started. │ Copilot uses AI, so always check for mistakes.        │
│   ▔▔▔▔                                                                                           │
│  Pick a model with /model. Delegate changes with an AI-generated PR using /delegate.             │
│  Enter ? to see all commands.                                                                    │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

[...]
 ❯ count how many files are in this folder
[...]
 ● There are 11 files in the current folder.

 Total usage est:        0 Premium requests
 API time spent:         9s
 Total session time:     34s
 Total code changes:     +0 -0
 Breakdown by AI model:
  gpt-5-mini              22.5k in, 834 out, 14.8k cached (Est. 0 Premium requests)

$ cat ~/.bash_history | wc -l
999

[mathijs81]

I'm not allowed to reopen this issue, should I file it as a new one?