If the host bind-mounts ~/.config/devbox-shell/ into the container
(the directory-mount pattern that avoids single-file inode breakage),
the container needs a bridge line in .bashrc or .bash_aliases to
source the mounted file. Previously this bridge had to be re-added
manually after every --force-recreate because it lived in the
container's writable layer.
Baking it into the skel .bash_aliases makes it automatic: every
fresh container sources ~/.config/devbox-shell/bash_aliases if it
exists, with zero manual steps. Hosts that don't use the devbox-shell
pattern are unaffected — the [ -r ... ] test silently skips.
The previous guard used an exported DEVBOX_PS1_SET env var to avoid
double-prefixing on re-source. But env vars survive 'exec bash'
while PS1 does not — a new bash rebuilds PS1 from .bashrc. Result:
the guard saw DEVBOX_PS1_SET=1, skipped the prefix, and the new
shell ran with bare PS1 (no [devbox] marker).
Replace the env-var guard with a substring check on PS1 itself.
If PS1 already contains '[devbox]' we skip, otherwise we prepend.
Correct in all three cases: first shell (PS1 has no marker → add),
exec bash (fresh PS1 has no marker → add), re-source within same
shell (PS1 still has marker → skip, no doubling).
v1.14.19c installed 'history -a; ' at the start of PROMPT_COMMAND
before zoxide's init ran. Zoxide's init uses ';' as its separator
when prepending __zoxide_hook, producing 'history -a;;__zoxide_hook'.
Every interactive prompt then emitted:
bash: PROMPT_COMMAND: syntax error near unexpected token ';;'
History flushing still worked (the 'history -a' half parsed fine),
but the error spam made the shell feel broken.
Fix by moving the history-flush PROMPT_COMMAND assignment AFTER
zoxide's init, and using a newline separator (via ${PROMPT_COMMAND:+...}
parameter expansion) so there's no semicolon involved at all. Each
PROMPT_COMMAND line runs as its own statement, no parsing contention.
Known upstream issue: https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide/issues/722
Two changes that address a longstanding frustration: bash history is
lost on every container recreate, and the container's ~/.bashrc and
~/.inputrc are stock Debian (no history tuning, no prefix search on
arrow keys, no integrations).
Added a named volume 'devbox-shell-history' mounted at ~/.cache/bash
with HISTFILE pointing there; history now survives 'docker compose up
--force-recreate'. The volume is added to both docker-compose.yml and
docker-compose.shared.yml, and ~/.cache/bash is registered in the
entrypoint ownership-fix loop per the AGENTS.md convention.
Baked rootfs/home/developer/.bash_aliases (sourced automatically by
Debian's default ~/.bashrc) and rootfs/home/developer/.inputrc into
the image. They give new containers: 100k-entry timestamped dedup
history with per-prompt flush, Up/Down arrow prefix history search,
case-insensitive coloured completion, aliases that prefer eza and
bat when present, git shortcuts, interactive rm/mv/cp, zoxide and
fzf (via 'fzf --bash') integration, and a [devbox] prompt marker.
The fzf integration uses 'fzf --bash' because we install fzf from
GitHub releases, not apt — the apt-path key-bindings aren't present.
Users who prefer their host's own shell config can uncomment two
commented bind-mount lines in docker-compose.yml to shadow the
baked defaults.
joakimp