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I would like it if my Emacs were to save the M-x calls in most-recently used order and if this order could persist and grow across restarts/other sessions. I am using Helm, so I guess I should be asking about helm-M-x, but I thought this would be a general problem which might have a solution.

Ideally the solution would not depend on desktop-save-mode, but if it does I am okay with that.

Edit: Apparently I should be using savehist as I gathered from the comments, but for some reason it is not working. It seems like my savehist file is being populated, but it is not being loaded when I start Emacs anew.

(setq savehist-file "~/.emacs.d/savehist")
(setq history-length t)
(setq history-delete-duplicates t)
(setq savehist-additional-variables 
                    '(savehist-minibuffer-history-variables
                      magit-read-rev-history
                      helm-M-x-input-history
                      read-expression-history
                      helm-grep-history
                      minibuffer-history
                      file-name-history
                      ido-file-history
                      evil-ex-history
                      mark-ring
                      search-ring
                      extended-command-history
                      evil-jumps-history
                      kill-ring
                      search-ring
                      regexp-search-ring
                      compile-history
                      log-edit-comment-ring
                      command-history))
(savehist-mode 1)
Drew
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kuwze
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  • I don't know about Helm, but how is your requirement different to the way the standard history already works? (which you can persist across sessions, along with other minibuffer histories, by enabling `(savehist-mode 1)` in your init file. – phils Oct 01 '18 at 00:52
  • Are you asking about `helm-m-x` or are you asking about `M-x` in general? The question isn't clear in this regard. – Drew Oct 01 '18 at 01:05
  • You *generally* do not need to add things to `savehist-additional-variables`. That is only needed for variables which are not *already* being treated as a minibuffer history. So adding ring variables is valid, but most of those `-history` suffix vars are probably not needed. You can always do some testing with `savehist-mode` enabled (i.e. just invoke all the history-using features you are interested in) and then verify what ended up in `savehist-minibuffer-history-variables`. – phils Oct 01 '18 at 03:06
  • What does `C-h v savehist-loaded` say after you start Emacs? (And if that indicates that it failed to load the file, `savehist-mode` should have signaled an error.) – phils Oct 01 '18 at 03:09

3 Answers3

2

You can use savehist-mode to do what you want, if you customize savehist-additional-variables to add command-history to it.

M-x puts each executed command on command-history as a list of the command and the arguments you (implicitly or explicitly) provided. It is not a plain minibuffer history, so it isn't handled automatically by savehist-mode. But if you add it to savehist-additional-variables then it will be saved and can later be restored.

Drew
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1

There is a smex package that among other persists all M-x calls between emacs sessions in MRU.

You can either call smex directly instead of general execute-extended-command or call counsel-M-x (ivy+counsel packages) that will use smex under the hood.

I was thinking helm-m-x could do the same but if not, I believe it could be extended in the similar manner.

PS, btw there is helm-M-x-always-save-history variable in helm, maybe it could help?

Maxim Kim
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  • `counsel-M-x` (ivy+counsel packages) that will use smex under the hood." - I thought `counsel-M-x` is a replacement for smex, not a wrapper, no? – npostavs Jan 24 '19 at 13:11
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    @npostavs On its own, `counsel-M-x` provides ivy incremental completion on top of `execute-extended-command`. Using it with `smex` adds sorting based on frequency of use. – glucas Jan 24 '19 at 15:19
  • See also `amx`, which is a more recent fork of `smex` and also supported by `counsel-M-x`. – glucas Jan 24 '19 at 15:22
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I had the same Problem and it seems that even though helm-M-x-input-history is saved by savehist per default, this doesn't help showing previously executed commands when using helm-M-x.

Despite the above comment saying that extended-command-history was saved automatically by savehist, the only thing that helped me was adding extended-command-history to savehist-additional-variables.

Additionally setting helm-M-x-always-save-history to t saves every helm-M-x command to extended-command-history, even when it fails.

nibbler
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