Configure ctrl-r reverse search to use entire ~/.bash_history?

[jakobkmar]

How can I configure fzf to search through the entire history when executing the reverse search?

Currently it only searches through a part of my history.

I don't know what the criteria for filtering the history are, but it seems like after a certain amount of time the commands are too old and won't be found by fzf anymore?
e.g.: ctrl-r with fzf only searches through 500 entries, but sort -u ~/.bash_history | wc -l gives 2338

System: Fedora 37 (with fzf version 0.35.1)

[sweetbbak]

https://github.com/Aloxaf/fzf-tab
https://github.com/joshskidmore/zsh-fzf-history-search

[junegunn]

It's more of a bash configuration problem. Seems related:
https://superuser.com/questions/575479/bash-history-truncated-to-500-lines-on-each-login

[lamyergeier]

@junegunn I have following in my bash history

shopt -s histappend                          # Append rather than overwrite history on exit; Refer: [Can history files be unified in bash? - Super User](https://superuser.com/questions/37576/can-history-files-be-unified-in-bash)
set +o histexpand                            # Refer: [How do I escape an exclamation mark? - Super User](https://superuser.com/questions/133780/in-bash-how-do-i-escape-an-exclamation-mark)
HISTCONTROL=ignorespace:ignoredups:erasedups # don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history.

# Save 10,000 lines of history in memory
HISTSIZE=10000                               # HISTSIZE=1000			# Default

# Save 1,000,000 lines of history to disk (will have to grep ~/.bash_history for full listing)
HISTFILESIZE=1000000                         # HISTFILESIZE=2000		

# timestamp format when history command is executed in bash
HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '                      #'%Y.%m.%d %H:%M:%S' #Display timestamp (ISO 8601 standard date and a 24 hour time), always appends the unix timestamp in ~/.bash_history

PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r; $PROMPT_COMMAND"

My Observation

fzf search is limited to last 10000 commands (as I have defined HISTSIZE=10000 in ~/.bashrc)

Question

1. So is there any issue in above?
2. Can you please confirm the default fzf behavior: if by pressing Ctrl+r on bash, fzf uses only data from HISTSIZE or it uses entire ~/.bash_history?
3. How to configure fzf to use ~/.bash_history instead of increasing the HISTSIZE bash environment variable? (note: increasing HISTSIZE slows down bash)