TERM is set to "dumb" since updating to roxterm 3.15.2 from 3.14.3

[twegener-embertec]

Since updating to roxterm 3.15.2 (from 3.14.3) the TERM environment variable is set to "dumb".
This results in WARNING: terminal is not fully functional messages an not properly functional pagers.

$ echo $TERM
dumb

$ rpm -q roxterm
roxterm-3.15.2-1.fc40.x86_64

If I run GNOME Terminal, the TERM variable is correctly set to xterm-256color.
The TERM environment variable is not set explicitly in any of the shell configuration files.

[twegener-embertec]

Perhaps this is related to 2158747 ?

[scimerman]

Can confirm the same issue here. Had to set in .bash_profile the export TERM=xterm-256color and then in the roxterm settings > profile > command tick the box login in order to bypass this dumb variable.

But since that was not the end of it, I downgraded it back from 3.15.2 to 3.14.3.

[realh]

Can you test latest master to see whether that fixes it?

Most of 2158747 got reverted, so the relevant code didn't change that much between 3.14.3 and 3.15.2. What I think is significant is that 3.14.3 deletes TERM, because vte's spawn functions set TERM (defaulting to "xterm-256color") if it isn't already present in the incoming environment. That line went missing, so I've restored it. In GNOME on Arch Linux, the incoming environment has no TERM, but apparently it gets set to "dumb" in whatever you're using.

Instead of altering .bash_profile, you could set a TERM override in your roxterm profile(s).

But since that was not the end of it, I downgraded it back from 3.15.2 to 3.14.3.

Do you mean you were having some other problems?

[twegener-embertec]

I tried building from src at 17f3277 (master) and launching the roxterm executable via the file manager, it still resulted in:

$ echo $TERM
dumb

This is in Fedora 40 / cinnamon desktop.

The workaround of editing the profile settings in roxterm, going to General and setting TERM environment variable to xterm-256color appears to be a satisfactory workaround.

[scimerman]

Do you mean you were having some other problems?

Yes, but since I was working on many things at the same time I didn't remember what it was. Otherwise I would already mentioned it here before or opened another bug. Sorry.

[realh]

I tried building from src at 17f3277 (master) and launching the roxterm executable via the file manager, it still resulted in:

$ echo $TERM
dumb

This is in Fedora 40 / cinnamon desktop.

The workaround of editing the profile settings in roxterm, going to General and setting TERM environment variable to xterm-256color appears to be a satisfactory workaround.

Strange. Did you make sure there was no instance of the old version still running? The default behaviour is that there should only be one instance running at a time, so launching it again passes the command on to the existing instance. Also, when compiled from an untagged commit, it should show the truncated commit hash at the end of the version number in Help > About ROXTerm.

[twegener-embertec]

Strange. Did you make sure there was no instance of the old version still running? The default behaviour is that there should only be one instance running at a time, so launching it again passes the command on to the existing instance.

Ah! After removing the profile workaround setting of TERM, then closing existing instances, and running via the file manager the roxterm built from source, gives different behaviour:

$ echo $TERM
xterm-256color

And Help -> About ROXTerm then gives RoxTerm 3.15.2.10-g17f3277.

However, it issues a dialog on startup saying:
Error from ROXTerm - Unable to read keys from shortcuts file Shortcuts/Default: unknown reason

Also, it shows the display as white on black rather than my normally configured black on white.

[realh]

It seems like the installation prefix set at compile time isn't matching the location where it's actually installed or running from. Running without installation is supported; the easiest way to do that is to launch it with its AppRun script instead of running the binary directly.