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Document terminfo & SSH details

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Adds information to the README to inform users about strategies and
workarounds for handling the lack of Ghostty's terminfo entry on remote
SSH hosts.
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Paul Hinze
2023-10-10 16:32:00 -05:00
parent 50fdb9dfe4
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README.md
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@ -204,6 +204,57 @@ fi
**This must be at the top of your bashrc, not the bottom.** The same
goes for any other shell.
### Terminfo and SSH
Ghostty ships with its own [terminfo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminfo)
entry to tell software about its capabilities. When that entry is detected,
Ghostty sets the `TERM` environment variable to `xterm-ghostty`.
If you use SSH to connect to other machines that do not have Ghostty's terminfo
entry, you will see error messages like `missing or unsuitable terminal:
xterm-ghostty`.
Hopefully someday Ghostty will have terminfo entries pre-distributed
everywhere, but in the meantime there are two ways to resolve the situation:
1. Copy Ghostty's terminfo entry to the remote machine.
2. Configure SSH to fall back to a known terminfo entry.
#### Copy Ghostty's terminfo to a remote machine
The following one-liner will export the terminfo entry from your host and
import it on the remote machine:
```shell-session
$ infocmp -x | ssh YOUR-SERVER -- tic -x -
```
**Note: macOS versions before Sonoma cannot use the system-bundled `infocmp`.**
The bundled version of `ncurses` is too old to emit a terminfo entry that can be
read by more recent versions of `tic`, and the command will fail with a bunch
of `Illegal character` messages. You can fix this by using Homebrew to install
a recent version of `ncurses` and replacing `infocmp` above with the full path
`/opt/homebrew/opt/ncurses/bin/infocmp`.
#### Configure SSH to fall back to a known terminfo entry
If copying around terminfo entries is untenable, you can override `TERM` to a
fallback value using SSH config.
```ssh-config
# .ssh/config
Host example.com
SetEnv TERM=xterm-256color
```
**Note: Fallback does not support advanced terminal features.** Because
`xterm-256color` does not include all of Ghostty's capabilities, terminal
features beyond xterm's like colored and styled underlines will not work.
**Note: Requires OpenSSH 8.7 or newer.** [The 8.7 release added
support](https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.7) for setting `TERM` via
`SetEnv`.
## Roadmap and Status
The high-level ambitious plan for the project, in order: