Bug#834244: libedit2: where_history() does not work. read_history() fails to update history_length.

[larice]

Package: libedit2
Version: jessie + stretch
Severity: normal
Tags: upstream

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
Using debian package ngspice.

  * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?
The debian package ngspice is configured to use libedit (--with-libedit).
ngspice uses the libedit function where_history() to format a prompt
for the next command.
The prompt is expected to increment with every entered command.
It does not so due to this bug. If ngspice is compiled to use libreadline
instead of libedit, then it does work.
I tried to work around, using history_base + history_length instead of where_history().
This does almost work. But ngspice calls read_history() (part of libedit)
to read the history from a file. And the implementation if read_history()
in libedit does not update history_length, causing the very first prompt
being incorrect.

Regards,
  Robert Larice


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.5
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)