Features that edit rc files (& how to work with dotfiles)

[joshuanianji]

Some features edit .bashrc and .zshrc, such as stuartleeks/shell-history which needs to chown a folder that is mounted.

The issue I'm experiencing comes when I use my custom dotfiles repo, which replaces any .zshrc files with a custom one, so any changes made from features are basically deleted.

Do you have any idea on how to fix this? I could source the old .zshrc in my custom file, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. I was also thinking that there can be a "best practice" for devcontainer features to add stuff to .zshrc.devcontainers (and so on for bash and fish) so people can take this into account when making install scripts for devcontainer dotfiles.

[eljog]

Thank you for starting this discussion.

I see that stuartleeks/shell-history is a community contributed feature. Could you please open an issue on their repository here to let the author/community know?

[haticecan37]

Thank you for starting this discussion.

I see that stuartleeks/shell-history is a community contributed feature. Could you please open an issue on their repository here to let the author/community know?

[joshuanianji]

Thank you! After some more research, I think features that mount volumes should chown during the postStartCommand or another lifecycle script, instead of adding stuff to bashrc in the install script.

Since this is dependent on the individual feature and not spec, I'll probably add an issue there.