The change was in reference to this bug report: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2016-09/msg00107.html
The problem was that bash tried to allocate memory from the start based on the value of HISTSIZE, but this proved problematic for users which used a large HISTSIZE to have unlimited history. The commit is here http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/commit/?h=devel&id=61c476d20d32dfd389c79fd4f2161a780685e42e And the entry in the changelog: +lib/readine/history.c + - add_history: if allocating the history list for the first time, + make sure the max history list size isn't so large that it will + cause allocation errors. Cap it at MAX_HISTORY_INITIAL_SIZE + (8192). Reported by Sean Zha <freeman_...@hotmail.com>
