Spawned shell (!) with kitty (--cwd=current)

[Kratacoa]

Issue

When I navigate to a directory in nnn, exit it with ! and open another window with launch --cwd=current (which is the command for kitty that allows to open a new window inside the previous directory), it opens inside home directory.
Actually, after doing such an action, even if i cd outside, it keeps opening inside the home directory.
According to kitty's author, this is because nnn doesn't set the shell as the active process for the terminal device.
Kitty uses the current directory of the active foreground child process associated with the terminal device in the active window.

Environment details (Put x in the checkbox along with the information)

[x] Operating System: Void Linux, musl version
[ ] Desktop Environment:
[x] Terminal Emulator: kitty
[x] Shell: fish
[ ] Custom desktop opener (if applicable):
[x] Program options used: aeEnx
[ ] Configuration options set:
[x] Issue exists on nnn master

[jarun]

! does not exit nnn, it spawns a shell in the current dir. (In case you want to setup cd on quit, visit the quickstart section.)

We took care of the chdir() thing in cfd4a66.

Even if I spawn a shell within nnn and open thunar, I see it opening in the spawned directory:

It's possible I don't quite understand what you are talking about. In that case, leaving it open for others to pitch in.

[jarun]

I also see:

2 ~/GitHub/nnn/src$ pwd
/home/vaio/GitHub/nnn/src
2 ~/GitHub/nnn/src$ echo $PWD  
/home/vaio/GitHub/nnn/src

So the current working directory is set correctly within the spawned shell. I am not sure why any other elaborate mechanism is required for any other subsequent processing to understand which location should be opened in the next window.

[jarun]

I tried a similar test by opening another tab in xfce4-terminal and I see it opens in home. So I think this is the problem you wanted to mention.

[0xACE]

I tried a similar test by opening another tab in xfce4-terminal and I see it opens in home. So I think this is the problem you wanted to mention.

Afaik this happens because the terminal itself reports it as it's own cwd and not the process that is running in the foreground. I have a similiar situation with st and tmux, just never bothered caring for it... The author in the other thread mentioned vim working properly, though I see the same issue with vim.... alas I'm not familiar with launch --cwd=current so I can't investigate at this time...

EDIT: just looked at spawn() that function has significantly changed from what I remember it being... Don't have time to research this....

[jarun]

@KlzXS @leovilok please see if this can be resolved easily (without forking and all... I guess this has to do with tcsetpgrp and tcgetpgrp).

Otherwise I am fine with not fixing it and moving on. We can't keep forking as if we have unlimited resource.

[leovilok]

Why not simply use --cwd=$PWD?

[leovilok]

I guess you're right about tcsetpgrp, but we wouldn't even need to set it to the subshell PID: setting it to the PID of nnn¹ should be enough, as we already do chdir().

¹: well after calling setpgid(getpid(), 0) to create the new process group.

[jarun]

@leovilok can you please raise the PR? I experimented with something similar and it didn't work with xfce4-terminal. Maybe I missed something.

[jarun]

Ignore the earlier comment. Tested with kitty. Works fine.

[jarun]

@Kratacoa please confirm that the patch works as expected for you.

[Kratacoa]

Nope, I'm afraid it doesn't work.
I've compiled the main branch as of the latest commit, using last release of kitty.
How can I provide some useful information?

[jarun]

The way I tested this is:

• add the following on kitty config to map F2 to open new tab: map f2 launch --cwd=current
• run nnn
• navigate to a different directory
• press !
• press F2

[Kratacoa]

Yeah, my setup is pretty much the same. Cannot reproduce the correct behaviour.
Although, now it does work properly when I open a window while inside nnn (by opening the window inside currently viewed directory).

[jarun]

I just tested with kitty-0.19.1 and it works for me there as well. Sorry but I can't spend more time on this.

[jarun]

My complete kitty config for reference:

allow_remote_control yes 
font_size 8.0 
map f2 launch --cwd=current

[jarun]

For future reference. The equivalent in xfce4-terminal is

xfce4-terminal --tab --working-directory=$PWD

[jarun]

Reopening as we had to revert the patch due to side-effects. Feel free to pitch in.

[leovilok]

We might want to reset the terminal process group on exit to what it was before.

[jarun]

Please try it out and please confirm with @Kratacoa.

Also, please confirm #763 is not reopened in the workflow.

[jarun]

@leovilok in case you might not have noticed, please feel free to experiment with this. I did try what you suggested but it didn't work. Very much possible I made a mistake somewhere.

[leovilok]

@jarun I had noticed, but my interest was quite low, and I finally forgot about this. Note that I never tested anything in this issue, every suggestion I made came from the docs or other discussion I read on the web. But I'm still unsure about how/when getpgid/setpgid should be used (except for kitty). I don't know how other TUI programs use it, I've not seen source code with these functions (except kitty source).

[jarun]

No problem! I will leave it open. I assumed you have more clarity on this.

[jarun]

This is open for a while and I don't see anyone picking it up.

Closing the issue and adding a line item in the ToDo list for the same.

[jarun]

@Kratacoa now we have a solution to get the nnn cwd: https://github.com/jarun/nnn/wiki/Troubleshooting#new-windowpane-using-cwd

[jarun]

We also suggested an easy solution for this here using OSC 7 but it wasn't preferred.