.bash_history does not update in Git for Windows (git bash)

bash, git, git-bash, windows

Solution

I put this in my `~/.bash_profile`

PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'

Problem

I am using Git for Windows (ver. 1.7.8-preview20111206) and even though I have a .bash_history file in my HOME folder, it never automatically gets updated. When I start Git Bash, I can see in the history commands that I manually added to the .bash_history file, but it does not get updated automatically. I used the `shopt -s histappend` command to make sure that the history gets saved every time I close the shell, but it does not work. If I manually use the `history -w` command, then my file gets updated, but I would want to understand why the shopt command does not work as I understand it should. Anyone can tell me why is this behavior happening?

Original source