Bug 718672 – x11-terms/alacritty-0.4.2: Missing terminfo capability

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Vasilis Lourdas 2020-04-20 20:46:56 UTC]

I've installed the latest testing alacritty and it works fine in most cases. However, I'm having trouble with vim and some color schemes (and when setting termguicolors). The alacritty wiki (https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/blob/d20051b5e5a8ee3c8dcd75a87d375ac7611a9d2d/INSTALL.md#terminfo) states that although the xterm-256color definition should work fine, you should install alacritty's own terminfo file. I tried doing that, but it doesn't work.

It seems that setting TERM to xterm-256color solves my vim issues, but I was wondering if the alacritty's own terminfo capability file can be installed.

[Comment 1 Georgy Yakovlev 2020-04-21 00:26:48 UTC]

Hi!

new enough ncurses ships alacritty terminfo, it's upstream.

> 6.2-r1
> qlist ncurses | grep alacritty
> /usr/share/terminfo/a/alacritty
> /usr/share/terminfo/a/alacritty-direct
> /usr/share/terminfo/a/alacritty+common

we used to generate one in the ebuild and stopped doing that, because of conflicts.


I suggest just using.
env:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
  TERM: xterm-256color

in alacritty.yml

you don't really loose a lot that way, and if you ssh to a system that does not have alacritty terminfo file installed you still keep the colors.

you have to have alacritty terminfo on a system you ssh to, not locally, for colors to work. but xterm-256 color is good workaround if systems you often ssh to have ancient ncurses.



some history here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/690030

[Comment 2 Georgy Yakovlev 2020-04-21 00:34:32 UTC]

and here's some vim black magic for you.

it makes truecolor work on alacritty, screen and tmux. even if TERM=alacritty

>
>  if &term =~# '^screen' || &term =~# '^tmux' || &term =~# '^alacritty'
>    let &t_8f = "\<Esc>[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
>    let &t_8b = "\<Esc>[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
>  endif
>  set termguicolors
>

[Comment 3 Vasilis Lourdas 2020-04-21 06:35:00 UTC]

(In reply to Georgy Yakovlev from comment #2)
> and here's some vim black magic for you.
> 
> it makes truecolor work on alacritty, screen and tmux. even if TERM=alacritty
> 
> >
> >  if &term =~# '^screen' || &term =~# '^tmux' || &term =~# '^alacritty'
> >    let &t_8f = "\<Esc>[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
> >    let &t_8b = "\<Esc>[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
> >  endif
> >  set termguicolors
> >

Thank you for the tip and the information!