Persist bash history

You can also use a mount to persist your bash command history across sessions / container rebuilds.

First, update your Dockerfile so that each time a command is used in bash, the history is updated and stored in a location we will persist.

If you have a root user, update your Dockerfile with the following:

RUN SNIPPET="export PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a' && export HISTFILE=/commandhistory/.bash_history" \
    && echo "$SNIPPET" >> "/root/.bashrc"

If you have a non-root user, update your Dockerfile with the following. Replace user-name-goes-here with the name of a non-root user in the container.

ARG USERNAME=user-name-goes-here

RUN SNIPPET="export PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a' && export HISTFILE=/commandhistory/.bash_history" \
    && mkdir /commandhistory \
    && touch /commandhistory/.bash_history \
    && chown -R $USERNAME /commandhistory \
    && echo "$SNIPPET" >> "/home/$USERNAME/.bashrc"

Next, add a local volume to store the command history. This step varies depending on whether or not you are using Docker Compose.

• Dockerfile or image: Use the mounts property (VS Code 1.41+) in your devcontainer.json file.

    "mounts": [
        "source=projectname-bashhistory,target=/commandhistory,type=volume"
    ]
  

• Docker Compose: Update (or extend) your docker-compose.yml with the following for the appropriate service.

  version: '3'
  services:
    your-service-name-here:
      volumes:
        - projectname-bashhistory:/commandhistory
       # ...
  volumes:
    projectname-bashhistory:
  

Finally, if you've already built the container and connected to it, run Dev Containers: Rebuild Container from the Command Palette (F1) to pick up the change. Otherwise run Dev Containers: Open Folder in Container... to connect to the container.

Note: If your host machine is running Linux (including WSL on Windows) and its user's UID and GID do not match those of the user in the dev container, the dev container user's UID and GID will be updated to those of the host user and you need to apply the same update to the volume by adding the following to the devcontainer.json.

```json
  "postCreateCommand": {
    "Fix Volume Permissions": "sudo chown -R $(whoami): /commandhistory"
  }
```

Video: How to make your bash history persist in a dev container