History only 4 lines long

[genec1]

System details:

Positron and OS details:

Positron Version: 2025.04.0 (Universal) build 250
Code - OSS Version: 1.98.0
Commit: 627b3d7
Date: 2025-04-03T16:31:38.728Z
Electron: 34.2.0
Chromium: 132.0.6834.196
Node.js: 20.18.2
V8: 13.2.152.36-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.3.0

Interpreter details:

R 4.4.3

Describe the issue:

History recall from the console triggered by ctrl-R only shows 4 lines. I can use the up arrow to scroll back further, but that mechanism doesn't allow searching. History recall in the python interpreter works fine. This used to work, unclear why it stopped.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Working with .Rmd file as a quarto document
2. Run various commands from the editor or console window, then press control-R in the console window

Expected or desired behavior:

I don't know what the default history length is, but longer than 4!

Were there any error messages in the UI, Output panel, or Developer Tools console?

None

[juliasilge]

I'm not familiar with this keyboard shortcut, actually! And I'm not sure where it is coming from:

Is one of these somehow bringing up history?

[genec1]

I don't see it in my keybindings list, but it is bringing up the same history list as command-up arrow, which my settings show as Interactive Window: Focus History "interactive.history.focus"

[MarekGierlinski]

I experience a similar issue, but in my case the history is 10 lines long. I can use up-down arrows to recall any line I typed before, but when I press commad-up arrow (on a Mac), I only get 10 lines. It also affects recalling a command by typing a few characters and then pressing command-up - it only searches the last 10 lines of code. This means I cannot recall a specific line I typed a while ago, unless I go up, up, up tens of times to find it manually.

This is a recent issue, I noticed it only in the last few days. I'm running 2025.04.0 build 250 on Sequoia 15.4.1.

[juliasilge]

This command is coming from upstream here:

positron/src/vs/workbench/contrib/interactive/browser/interactive.contribution.ts

Line 793 in aab7765

id: 'interactive.history.focus',

I am a bit surprised this command works with our console, honestly! This is getting activated here because our console apparently does have isCompositeNotebook set to true.

Related to #372, where we talk about options for history navigation UI.

[jmcphers]

I strongly suspect that this is a regression from #6741. In that PR, I updated the history system so that the search features use a different history than basic console navigation. The idea was that "search" would want to use the full library of commands that you had ever run, whereas navigation would literally mean "take me to the last thing I physically executed in this window".

@genec1 , @MarekGierlinski Do you see the shorter (4, 10) line histories growing over time as you expect?

[genec1]

Nope, the length of history stays constant.

[MarekGierlinski]

I'm not sure when it changed, but right now I can only see 4 lines of history. But as I type new commands in the console, the history contains only 4 most recent lines. It doesn't change (except it was 10 yesterday).

[jmcphers]

Thank you, that's very helpful! I think I know what's going on here. PR #7376 has a candidate fix.