Is there a way to preserve toolbox PWD uppon exit?

[josecastillolema]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Is there a way to preserve toolbox PWD upon exit?
I.e.: This is the behavior today:

$ pwd
/home/user

$ toolbox enter

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ cd bin

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ pwd
/home/user/bin

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ logout

$ pwd
/home/user

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like a way to preserve toolbox PWD upon exit:

$ pwd
/home/user

$ toolbox enter

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ cd bin

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ pwd
/home/user/bin

⬢ [toolbox:41] $ logout

$ pwd
/home/user/bin

[debarshiray]

I suppose one can come up with a local hack that uses the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable to set the PWD and OLDPWD environment variables. :)

If we do this by default in Toolbx, we should probably make sure that cd - takes it back to the previous working directory on the host. That would accommodate the feature with minimum disruption for those used to the previous behaviour.

[mattdm]

I've had this in my ~/.bash_logout for, uh, 25 years or so:

echo "export OLDPWD=\"$(pwd)\"" > ~/.oldpwd

and then in ~/.bash_profile,

if [ -f ~/.oldpwd ]; then
        . ~/.oldpwd
fi

That lets me cd - back to wherever I last was. If you want it to do that by default, just throw in a cd - (or cd $OLDPWD).

I'm not sure anything this should be the default, but it's pretty easy to implement individually if you want it.

[josecastillolema]

Thanks for the hint @mattdm !
I have been playing around with .bash_logout and .oldpwd but I was unable to preserve the path when exiting toolbox.

[josecastillolema]

This did the trick:

> cat .bash_logout
# ~/.bash_logout
echo $(pwd) > ~/.toolbox-last-pwd

> cat .bashrc.d/functions.sh
tb() {
  toolbox enter "$@"
  if [ -f ~/.toolbox-last-pwd ]; then
    builtin cd "$(cat ~/.toolbox-last-pwd)"
    rm -f ~/.toolbox-last-pwd
  fi
}

[mattdm]

The key part of my trick is that OLDPWD is a magic bash variable. Bash uses it to keep track of the previous directory, for things like cd -. (Not sure offhand if POSIX sh or other shells do the same.)