How to change ‘history’ command output

Try upgrading your installation of RVM if you are running something older than 1.6.10 (check your active version with rvm --version).

In some shell:

rvm get latest

Then, either restart your other, existing shells, or run rvm reload in them.

Note: Another problem the OP faced was PATH manipulation after RVM was loaded into the shell. This created the “right gemset selected, but wrong installation of ruby” effect that disappeared after “cd out, cd in” (since RVM would have reasserted its position in the PATH at that point). When a shell is started in a directory that contains an .rvmrc it is vital that RVM be the last thing to prepend elements to the PATH (at least any PATH elements that might contain a ruby (etc.) so that the Ruby installation selected in the .rvmrc will be effective).

RVM arranges to source .rvmrc files by “hooking” your shell’s cd command (a cd shell function in bash, an entry in chpwd_functions for zsh). Normally this lets it catch any “normal” cd command that you type it or run via a sourced script after loading RVM.

I do not have Lion to test with, but I suspect the way it works is that Terminal forks, calls chdir(2), then execs your shell to establish your new shell’s initial working directory. This means that the directory is already established by the time RVM is loaded in your shell initialization file.

The history seems a bit muddy, but RVM has had some support for sourcing the .rvmrc file in the shell’s initial working directory when it is first loaded. It looks like maybe it was intended to be screen-specific, but in RVM commit cb649ba (Always load the .rvmrc if in an interactive shell (open new tab in same dir)., 2011-05-14) relaxed the requirement so that it should source .rvmrc files for any interactive shell when RVM is first loaded. This commit was first present in the 1.6.10 release of RVM. The code has changed a bit since then, but it still works in (more or less) the same way in the latest versions.

I don't think there is a way to share history amongst Terminal tabs only, but here is something that could help you.

The history is not something that is handled by your terminal but by your shell (bash, tcsh, zsh, etc.)

Here are some options that'll help you set up a shared history amongst all the terminal windows (the shell instances).

This should be put somewhere in your .bashrc file.

export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:erasedups  # no duplicate entries
export HISTSIZE=100000                   # big big history
export HISTFILESIZE=100000               # big big history
shopt -s histappend                      # append to history, don't overwrite it

# Save and reload the history after each command finishes
export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r; $PROMPT_COMMAND"