Why Eshell? - Part 2

Among many reasons of why I use eshell as my main terminal, I listed following in part 1 of my `Why Eshell?` series blog post. I am listing it here for posterity:

1. Long running command notification and time
2. Cross session history
3. Interactive ido completion
4. Unified interface (shell prompt buffer as regular emacs buffer)
5. Plan9 Style Shell prompt (Think of it as bash REPL)
6. Multiple terminal management
7. Super charge bash with elisp
8. Eshell aliases that puts bash aliases to shame :)

I addressed first point here: notification and time. Let me address second point, which is sharing eshell history across many terminal sessions.

(defvar keshell-history-global-ring nil
  "The history ring shared across Eshell sessions.")

(defun keshell-hist-use-global-history ()
  "Make Eshell history shared across different sessions."
  (unless keshell-history-global-ring
    (when eshell-history-file-name
      (eshell-read-history nil t))
    (setq keshell-history-global-ring
	  (or eshell-history-ring (make-ring eshell-history-size))))
  (setq eshell-history-ring keshell-history-global-ring))
;; Following hook enables it
(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'keshell-hist-use-global-history)
;; Following removes the hook
(remove-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'keshell-hist-use-global-history)

After evaluating above 12 lines of elisp, you will have a list that holds all the eshell entries across sessions, which you can persist into a history file (just uses bash history file) and can even share it across machines over network. This opens up a whole new possibilities of completions, deduplication and multiple eshell buffer management goodness, which I will cover in the next few parts of `Why Eshell?` posts. So stay tuned and happy eshelling!